Iconic actress Sophia Loren was hospitalized on Sunday following a fall at her home in Geneva. The Italian star reportedly sustained fractures to her hip and femur, and underwent surgery with what has been described as a positive outcome.
Loren, who turned 89 on September 20, was due in Bari, Italy on Tuesday to receive honorary citizenship while also inaugurating the fourth outpost of her Sophia Loren Restaurant chain.
The restaurant posted on Instagram that Loren will have to observe a short period of convalescence, followed by rehabilitation.
Loren, an Oscar winner for 1960’s Two Women, was recently seen in the 2020 Netflix movie The Life Ahead, returning to the screen following an 11-year absence to be directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. The film was an adaptation of Romain Gary’s The Life Before Us, which relocated the novel to Bari, not far from Naples in Southern Italy where Loren grew up. Loren played Madame Rosa, a Neapolitan woman who meets a Senegalese orphan boy named Momo. A Holocaust survivor and former prostitute, Madame Rosa’s well of emotion is deep, but her patience is not to be tested, and though she and Momo start off at odds, their relationship becomes transformational for the pair of them.
The film scored an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. Loren won the David di Donatello Award for Best Actress for her portayal of Madame Rosa.
Of making the decision to return to the movies, Loren told Deadline in 2021, “It had been a while where I had not worked on films. And when Edoardo gave me the book to read, right away I realized I was already filming it without filming it. It wasn’t as simple as reading the book. I was imagining what could be done through me as Madame Rosa, and with Edoardo directing. It was a wonderful feeling.”
