In 1950, Howard Hughes, then one of the richest and most powerful men in Hollywood, summoned a young Italian actress to America. He had seen her photographs and decided he wanted her—on screen and, more insistently, off it. She arrived alone after only one of the two promised tickets appeared. For weeks he pressed his case, even floating the idea that she leave her husband and marry him. She refused, again and again. Before she could finally leave, she signed a long contract with his company. It effectively locked her out of other American studios for years; any producer who wanted her would have to pay Hughes a steep fee. Most actresses in her position would have stayed and made the bargain. She went home to Italy instead. Born Luigia Lollobrigida in 1927 in the mountain town of Subiaco, she had already learned how little was guaranteed. The war wiped out much of her family’s furniture-making business; afterward they lived modestly in Rome. There she studied art, drew portraits and caricatures, and posed for photo-comics under the name Diana Loris to help keep the household afloat. Small film roles followed. Then Hughes found her. Back in Europe, free of his direct control, she built the career on her own terms. In 1953 she starred in Bread, Love and Dreams as a fiery village girl; Italian audiences embraced her at once. International films followed—opposite Humphrey Bogart in Beat the Devil, as Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in the circus drama Trapeze, in the romantic comedy Come September with Rock Hudson, and later in Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell. The contract delayed full Hollywood work, but European and co-produced pictures made her one of the most recognizable stars of the decade. At the height of that fame she stepped away from the roles that had defined her and took up a camera. She photographed artists and fellow performers—Salvador Dalí, Audrey Hepburn, Paul Newman among them—and in 1974 secured a rare exclusive interview and photo session with Fidel Castro. Later she turned seriously to sculpture, exhibiting her work around the world and continuing to create well into old age. Gina Lollobrigida died in Rome in January 2023 at the age of 95. The image that endures is of one of cinema’s great beauties. The life that produced it was shaped by a decision few in her position made: she declined the terms set by the most powerful man in Hollywood and built something larger on her own. 🌹