Gina Lollobrigida: Life and times of the sultry movie icon who died at 95

This long-enduring European movie icon shot to fame in the 1950s as a sultry Mediterranean bombshell. Known simply as "La Lollo," she was an epitome of Italian post-war cinema, rivalled only by Sophia Loren.

Born to a working class family in a poor mountainous area east of Rome on July 4, 1927, she studied sculpture and then got her break in the film world after finishing third in the 1947 Miss Italia beauty contest. One of her earliest performances was as Gemma, the unhappy adulteress in the 1953 film by director Mario Soldati "The Wayward Wife". She burst to fame in Italy with the leading roles in two Italian comedies by Luigi Comencini..

A role opposite Humphrey Bogart in John Huston's 1954 film "Beat the Devil," sealed her worldwide fame and in 1955 she made what became one of her signature films, "The World's Most Beautiful Woman". But despite playing opposite other American stars such as Frank Sinatra and Burt Lancaster, she never clicked with Hollywood and preferred to work closer to home, making films throughout the 1960s with directors such as Mario Bolognini.

Lollobrigida fled the rural area of her birth with her family during World War Two and was later sent to the Academy of Fine Arts in the capital to complete her education. She first earned her living as a model for fotoromanzi, the photographic novels avidly read in Italy, using the stage name Diana Loris. Here she's in the still of 'Beautiful But Dangerous'.

In 1950 she married Yugoslav emigre doctor Milko Skofic, who became her manager. They couple had one son, Milko Junior. They separated after nearly 17 years, and Lollobrigida said later she had no intention of remarrying. However in 2006, when she was 79, she announced her intention to marry Javier Rigau, a Spaniard 34 years her junior with whom she had a confidential close friendship for years. Months later, she called off the wedding, saying that the media coverage had ruined her life with "endless attacks, slander and violence". She blasted the Spanish media for attacking Rigau “an opportunist”.

When she stopped making films, Lollobrigida developed new careers as a photographer and sculptor and was also a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund, and its Food and Agriculture Organisation. Between 1972 and 1994 she published six books of her photographs, including Italia Mia (My Italy), The Philippines, and the Wonder of Innocence, photographs of and for children.

In 1975, she made a documentary film "Portrait of Fidel Castro". In her later years she returned to her first love, sculpting, keeping a summer home in the Tuscan city of Pietrasanta, an artist's colony where she worked with sculptors such as Bottero.

In 2013, when she was 85, an auction of her jewellery by Sotheby's in Geneva fetched $4.9 million and set a record for a pair of diamond and pearl earrings, which sold for $2.37 million. The proceeds went to stem cell research. "Jewels are meant to give pleasure and for many years I had enormous pleasure wearing mine," she had then said. "Selling my jewels to help raise awareness of stem cell therapy, which can cure so many illnesses, seems to me a wonderful use to which to put them."

When asked how she felt turning 90 in 2017, she said it was feeling like "30 plus 30 plus 30".