Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida has died at the age of 95, according to ANSA news agency.
She was one of the highest-profile European actresses of the 1950s and early 1960s, playing opposite Hollywood stars including Humphrey Bogart, Rock Hudson, Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis and Frank Sinatra.
Starting out from humble beginnings, she became one of the most recognisable faces of Italian post-war cinema.
An international sex symbol, rivalled only by fellow Italian actress Sophia Loren, Lollobrigida was one of the last of the last remaining stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Her former lawyer, Giulia Citani, said she died at a clinic in Rome, but did not give her cause of death.
Affectionately known in her native Italy simply as “La Lollo”, she starred in films including The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Solomon and Sheba, Beautiful But Dangerous and The World’s Most Beautiful Woman during her five-decade acting career.
Eventually stepping away from the movie world, Lollobrigida found success as a photographer and sculptor in later life, also venturing into the world of politics.
In 1975, rumours swirled that she had had an affair with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, after she secured exclusive access to him for a documentary she produced.
She later made headlines in 2006, when aged 79, she announced she was marrying a man 34 years her junior. She later called off the wedding, blaming the media for spoiling it.
Just last September, she failed in a bid to win a seat in the Italian parliament for Sovereign and Popular Italy (ISP), a leftist political party at national elections, after they failed to reach the 3% electoral threshold.
In 1975, rumours swirled that she had had an affair with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, after she secured exclusive access to him for a documentary she produced.
She later made headlines in 2006, when aged 79, she announced she was marrying a man 34 years her junior. She went on to call off the wedding, blaming the media for spoiling it.
When she was 80, she said in an interview: “All my life I wanted a real love, an authentic love, but I have never had one. No one has ever truly loved me. I am a cumbersome woman”.