[2] Encouraged to enroll in acting lessons after entering a beauty pageant, Loren began her film career at age 16 in 1950.

She holds the record for having earned seven David di Donatello Awards for Best Actress: Two Women; Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963); Marriage Italian Style (1964, for which she was nominated for a second Oscar); Sunflower (1970); The Voyage (1974); A Special Day (1977) and The Life Ahead (2020).

Her mother was a piano teacher and aspiring actress, her father a failed engineer who worked temporarily for the national railway Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane.

Loren claimed in her autobiography that he was of noble descent, by virtue of which she is entitled to call herself "Viscountess of Pozzuoli, Lady of Caserta, a title given by the House of Hohenstaufen, Marchioness of Licata Scicolone Murillo".

[citation needed]At age 15, Loren as Sofia Lazzaro entered the Miss Italia 1950 beauty pageant and was assigned as Candidate No.

In 1960, Loren starred in Vittorio De Sica's Two Women, a stark, gritty story of a mother who is trying to protect her 12-year-old daughter in war-torn Italy.

[19] During the 1960s, Loren was one of the most popular actresses in the world, and continued to make films in the United States and Europe, starring with prominent leading men.

[20] Among Loren's best-known films of this period are Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid with Charlton Heston, The Millionairess (1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (1960) with Clark Gable, Vittorio De Sica's triptych Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) with Marcello Mastroianni, Peter Ustinov's Lady L (1965) with Paul Newman, Arabesque (1966) with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando.

[18] Loren headlined the action thriller Firepower (1979) co-starring James Coburn and O. J. Simpson, whom she had previously worked with on The Cassandra Crossing.

Although she was set to star in 13 episodes of CBS's Falcon Crest in 1984 as Angela Channing's half-sister Francesca Gioberti, negotiations fell through at the last moment and the role went to Gina Lollobrigida instead.

She played the title role in the 1984 TV movie Aurora, in which she acted alongside her 11-year-old real-life son Edoardo Ponti.

This collaboration was covered in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers where actress Sonia Aquino portrayed Loren.

[24][25] In 1991, Loren received an Academy Honorary Award, which described her as "One of the genuine treasures of world cinema who, in a career rich with memorable performances, has added permanent luster to our art form."

In 2009, Loren stated on Larry King Live that Fellini had planned to direct her in a film shortly before his death in 1993.

[27] Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Loren was selective about choosing her films and ventured into various areas of business, including cookbooks, eyewear, jewelry, and perfume.

[28] In Grumpier Old Men (1995), Loren played a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, and Ann-Margret.

[30] In 2001, Loren received a Special Grand Prix of the Americas Award at the Montreal World Film Festival for her body of work.

The film also stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Penélope Cruz, Kate Hudson, Marion Cotillard, and Nicole Kidman.

In 2010, Loren played her own mother in a two-part Italian television miniseries about her early life, directed by Vittorio Sindoni with Margareth Madè as Loren, entitled La mia casa è piena di specchi (My House Is Full of Mirrors [it]), based on the memoir by her sister Maria.

In July 2013 Loren made her film comeback in an Italian short-film adaptation of Jean Cocteau's 1930 play The Human Voice (La voce umana), which charts the breakdown of a woman who is left by her lover – with her younger son, Edoardo Ponti, as director.

[33] After turning 90 in September 2024, despite having been inactive since the release of The Life Ahead, Loren dismissed rumors about her retirement and expressed her hopes to star in new productions.

[34] On 16 November 2017, Loren received a star at Almeria Walk of Fame in Spain for her work on White Sister.

[40] Her real estate portfolio has included a ranch in Hidden Valley, California,[41] an apartment in the Hampshire House building in Manhattan,[42] a condo on Williams Island in South Florida,[43] and a villa in Rome.

[45] In February 2021, she was the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs and chose a pizza oven as her luxury item.

Her musical choices included Cole Porter's "I've Got You Under My Skin" as sung by Ella Fitzgerald, and Debussy's "Clair de lune" as played by Tamás Vásáry.

[47][48] On 24 September 2023, Loren received emergency surgery following fractures to her hip and femur sustained from a fall at her home in Switzerland.

In 1962, Loren's sister Maria married the youngest son of Benito Mussolini, Romano, with whom she had two daughters, Alessandra, a former MP and MEP, and Elisabetta.

In 2013, the Supreme Court of Italy cleared her of the charges in a separate decades-long dispute over the tax she should have paid on her 1974 earnings.

[59] In September 1999, Loren filed a lawsuit against 79 adult websites for posting altered nude photos of her on the internet.

[60][61] In The Motion Picture Herald, both British and American exhibitors voted for Loren within the Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll: