Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life

by Sophia Loren

  His teaching marked my thirties in a significant way. I had been working for more than half my lifetime, but in some ways I was still vulnerable, inexperienced in certain ways. Being thirtysomething, for a woman, isn’t easy. Her youth is behind her—or at least it was in my day—and even if you do something amazing, no one will ever again say: And to think she’s so young!

  I was starting to understand that what lay before me wasn’t necessarily more new beginnings, that by then I, too, had a past I needed to come to terms with, for better or for worse. The time had come for me to face up to my shortcomings, and to either accept them, or overcome them. It was Chaplin who identified my weak point, and pointed it out to me with his proverbial frankness.

  “Sophia, my dear, you have one imperfection which you must overcome if you wish to be a truly happy woman. You have to learn to say ‘No.’ Enough with always trying to please everyone, enough with trying to satisfy everything and everyone. ‘No,’ ‘No,’ and again ‘No.’ You still don’t know how to say that word, and this is a serious drawback. Learning to say ‘No’ is of essential importance to being able to do as you please with your time. It was hard for me, too, but from the moment I got it, nothing was ever the same again: my life became much simpler.”

  A Countess from Hong Kong was Chaplin’s last film, and also his first one in color. I will never forget his face peering through the cabin door, in a cameo appearance as the old ship steward. A small, humble appearance that comes back to me every now and again to keep me company.

  LADY LOREN

  Charlie Chaplin and Marlon Brando had entered my life after a series of movies that, over the course of the 1960s, had me working beside some of the most glamorous international stars: Gregory Peck, Paul Newman, Alec Guinness, Omar Sharif, Charlton Heston, and the marvelous, unforgettable, Peter Sellers.

  Also in 1965, Paul Newman and I did Lady L together, an important, difficult movie directed by Peter Ustinov, adapted from a novel by Romain Gray, the Russian-French writer who also wrote under his pseudonym, Émile Ajar. He is the only author to have won two Prix Goncourts, one under each name. Working alongside us were David Niven and Philippe Noiret, both brilliant actors. I had the complex role of the main character, an eighty-year-old duchess who recollects her life back to the Napoleonic era. It forced me to work on myself a lot. Having to age like that was a huge challenge, because, in addition to the makeup, my voice was key. I don’t remember how I managed to find it, where I got it from, but I do remember that I was very proud of the results, because I had to speak in a perfect British accent. And of course I enjoyed traveling in time, and imagining myself fifty years older.

  In my treasure trove of memories, I find this beautiful letter to my mother, which I wrote at the time:

  Dear Mammina,

  Yesterday I rehearsed the part of an old woman and they took these three Polaroid photos of me. I’m sending them to you because when I saw them I was very moved to see how much I looked like the portrait of MAMMA in the living room.

  Kisses, see you soon Sophia

  (Three hours of makeup, and glue used to pull my skin.)

  Life and cinema play strange tricks on you. Lady L was the same age as I am now. And yet, even today, I often feel as young as I did back then. And sometimes even younger. Perhaps it’s because time is subjective, and depends on the peace you feel inside. Aging can even be fun if you know how to spend your days, if you’re satisfied with what you’ve achieved, and you’re still curious about the world around you. I wake up in the morning and try to think optimistically. I do things I can appreciate, that make sense to me. Even small things—they may not be important, but they give my days a touch that pleases and suits me.

  When I was working with Peter Ustinov, he had just won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for Topkapi. He was an excellent director, strong, charismatic, and funny although his humor could be somewhat coarse. It wasn’t always easy to keep up with him. Paul Newman, on the other hand, was gentle and sensitive, rather shy, but at peace with himself. He was as handsome as can be, with those eyes that gave him such a great screen presence. He was very fortunate to have had a long, peaceful, fulfilling marriage, which always kept him rooted in real life. He never put on airs, never blamed others for his own problems. He knew himself very well.

  Paul always came to the set with a pile of towels. “Chi ’o ssape’ pecchè?” (Who knows why?) I’d wonder to myself.

  One day I couldn’t resist the temptation and I just came out and asked him, maybe a tad too impertinently: “Paul, what do you need those towels for?”

  He looked at me with a big, unabashed smile: “My hands sweat, Sophia. They’re always moist.”

  He was an adorable man, who didn’t feel any need to hide his vulnerabilities.

  When Omar Sharif and I worked together on the set of the very beautiful fairy tale directed by Francesco Rosi, More Than a Miracle, we put together a cooking contest. As I think of the food today, it still makes my mouth water.

  Omar was full of life, overflowing with ideas. We had been born on the opposite shores of the Mediterranean, so we shared a love of the same fragrances, the colors, the wit. We had already made The Fall of the Roman Empire together, with Alec Guinness, and now it was 1967. In those days, the production company offered actors a rancid “brown bag” lunch. One day, after we were faced with another bag, Omar looked up at me with his beautiful deep, dark eyes and sighed:

  “How can anyone eat this rubbish? How I’d love to be eating some of my mother’s eggplants right this minute.”

  It was something I might have said. I burst out laughing, and raised the stakes: “You can’t imagine how good my mother’s are . . . They’re the most delicious eggplants in the world!”

  “Oh no, Sophia,” he replied. “I’m sure that everything else you tell me is true, and Romilda might even be an excellent cook, but there’s no contest when it comes to eggplants. My mother’s are unsurpassable!”

  “Do you want to bet?” I asked, giving him a cunning look.

  So Omar called his mother in Egypt and suggested she come visit him in Rome, without telling her why. She was more than willing to do so, happy to spend some time with her son, whom she rarely managed to see. When she arrived, he showed her around, showered her with kindness, and introduced her to his Italian friends. And then, in between the lines, he launched his final attack: “Mother, next week we’re having dinner with Sophia, her mother and the crew. How about cooking some eggplants?”

  The woman took the task very seriously, and checked out all the stands at the market, buying an eggplant here, another one there . . . only the nicest ones. As for Mammina, she was playing in her own backyard, so it didn’t take much to convince her to participate.

  On the evening of the contest, we summoned the two cooks and put them to the test. We improvised a makeshift jury, one that had a healthy appetite, and it wasn’t easy to choose a winner. Their recipes for eggplant parmesan were very similar. Both the Pozzuoli and Egyptian dishes melted in your mouth, with a crisp crust that tickled your palate. After having subsisted so long on leathery sandwiches, we wolfed down everything. In the end, after a long debate, Mrs. Sharif won by a slim margin. But Mammina wasn’t at all upset. She’d found a friend in that likeable, warm Egyptian mother. That night she confessed to me, laughing: “Amm’ parlato sulamente ’e vuje. Pecchè ogni star è bell’ a’ mamma soja” (We only talked about the two of you. Because every star’s a beauty in their mother’s eyes).

  Food makes people happy, it takes you back home, it says so many things that words can’t say.

  • • •

  I first met Peter Sellers in 1960 on the set for The Millionairess, and we’d hit it off right away. A man of outstanding intelligence, Peter always knew how to surprise and overwhelm you with his charm. He never once played a scene the way you would have expected him to. He was outgoing, unpredictable, incredible fun. He could make me laugh like no one else. He had grown very fond of me and we loved
working together. Our friendship would last a very long time.

  The movie was freely inspired by a comedy of the same title by George Bernard Shaw. By the terms of her late father’s will, the heiress Epifania cannot marry unless her husband can turn £150 into £15,000 within three months. In a melodramatic attempt at suicide, Epifania plunges into the Thames and meets an Indian doctor (played by Peter), whose mother has made him promise to marry a woman who can survive on 35 shillings for three months.

  A week after we finished shooting, Peter and I holed up in the Abbey Road studios—yes, the very same studios of Beatles fame—to record Goodness Gracious Me, a single conceived by George Martin, their legendary record producer, to promote the movie. It rose to the top of the charts in just a few weeks, which encouraged us to do another. The next hit was Bangers and Mash, which told the amusing story of the marriage between a British soldier and a Neapolitan woman. Food joined us and divided us in this duet. Whenever Peter/Joe wanted his mother’s cooking, sausages and mash in Cockney sauce, I would, instead, cook minestrone, macaroni, tagliatelle, and vermicelli. It was one improvisation and laugh after another, resounding in the song’s every note.

  Ironically, while we were shooting The Millionairess, my path crossed with that of The Cat, a notorious thief, or, rather, The Cat’s path crossed with that of my jewelry. All of my jewelry. After spending a night at the Ritz, where I had been able to leave my black jewelry box in the hotel safe, we moved into the Norwegian Barn, a cottage located inside the Country Club in Hertfordshire. A small world followed me everywhere from set to set, including Basilio and Ines, Livia, the cook, and a hairdresser. Basilio, who was worried about the jewelry, had asked for a night guard, but the club secretary had confidently replied: “This is England, not Naples, you have nothing to worry about!”

  We took possession of the cottage, and each of us settled into his or her own room. My room, which was on the upper floor, had a large, brightly lit wardrobe adjoining it. That’s where the thief hid, while we were all still inside the house, like some subtle, silent gust of wind, lying in wait for the right moment to blow. That evening, when I went to pick up Carlo at the airport, while Basilio and Ines were watching TV and chatting, The Cat slipped out of the wardrobe upstairs and took away all the precious pieces of my life.

  When we got back, at around eleven, we went up to the bedroom. It was late, and we had a hard day’s work ahead of us. As soon as we got in I could tell something wasn’t right and looked around, trying to figure out what it was. When I saw that the dresser drawer was open, and so was the window right next to it, at last, I understood. I felt faint. “Uh maronna mia! (Holy Mary),” I managed to blurt out. “I can’t believe it . . .” My diamonds, my sapphires, my pearls and rubies, my fondest memories, had all of them taken flight through the window.

  I had become able at last, thanks to my work, to buy jewelry for myself, and Carlo would give me a present each time I finished making a movie. Behind each pair of earrings, ring, necklace, was a story. Each piece represented hard work, a new achievement. The pieces of jewelry were my medals that signified my victories.

  We called Scotland Yard and the police came right over, but the thief had taken off, and they never did manage to catch him. (A long time later, when, the crime was described publicly, The Cat actually wrote me a letter signing it with that name. And that was how I imagined him, a cat moving around stealthily, all dressed in black, one of Cary Grant’s stand-ins in To Catch a Thief.)

  At first, I could hardly control myself, my head was spinning, I felt like I’d been violated. I knew in my mind that there are far worse things in life, but it was as if someone had entered my head, my heart, to rob me of my accomplishments and above all the hard work I’d done to achieve them. Each piece had reminded me not only of the movies I’d worked on, but of all the emotions at the time. I could relive everything by wearing a necklace around my neck or a ring on my finger.

  When I finally went to bed, it was almost dawn, but the next day I went to the set, as if nothing had happened. I had a sense of duty and it was important to honor my commitment, and to show my respect for my colleagues and their time. And in my work I could find the order that the robbery had stolen from me. By doing what I knew how and had to do, I had the impression of regaining control.

  That morning, during a break from the shooting, the crew gathered all around me.

  “What is it?” I asked, a little frightened at the small crowd. I was still very much on edge.

  Peter Ustinov handed me a small silver package with a gold ribbon around it. Inside it was a beautiful brooch, which my fellow workers had decided to give me as a sign of their affection, to let me know they were with me. Their generous, thoughtful gesture made me realize that nothing is ever really lost, that there were going to be lots of other movies to make, celebrate, remember. And to wear.

  But once more it was De Sica who had the last word about this episode, and who offered me the most precious gem of all.

  Vittorio was in London for a few days to do a small part with us. As soon as he heard about the theft, he came to visit me and to see how I was. He found me in tears in the privacy of my bedroom. Still upset, I was sitting on the bed, and I kept looking at the dresser, the window, the emptiness that The Cat had left behind. Vittorio sat down next to me and handed me his handkerchief.

  “Donna Sofì, don’t shed your tears in vain. We’re both Neapolitans, born in poverty. Money comes, and then it goes. Think of all the money I gamble away at the casino . . .”

  “What are you saying, Vittò? Nun aje capito (You don’t understand). Those jewels were a part of me . . .”

  “Sofì, listen to me. Never shed tears for something that cannot shed tears for you.”

  XI

  COMINGS AND GOINGS

  THE MIRACLE

  As my memories skip from one to another, they take me back to January 1969 to the Geneva hospital where Dr. de Watteville brought about my own new life as a mother.

  I can safely say that I was born a second time on the day my first child was born. I was completely overcome by emotion when I held him in my arms. For years, this had been my greatest wish. In order to enjoy that long-sought feeling as much as I could, or maybe for fear of waking up from this marvelous dream, I shut myself up in my room at the hospital. It was warm inside, and I felt safe, me and him, alone together, in a soft cocoon of endless gazes, nursing, and caresses. The nurses pampered us, took care of us, and calmed my concerns.

  We were still in the very middle of the star system, and Carlo Jr. was being treated like a royal baby. So the outside world was greedy for a show. A sea of photographers and cameramen had arrived from every corner of the planet, and crowded the area all around the hospital, but couldn’t really touch us inside. Of course, keeping that world at bay was no simple task, but Carlo was able to give them what they wanted while keeping the rest private for us.

  A press conference was organized, to please them all in one go. The records show that the noisiest of all the paparazzi were the Italians, of course, the most determined the British, the most organized the Germans, who had two helicopters and a private plane, the best informed the Americans, the cleverest the Japanese, who had chosen a woman as head of the crew, someone who would find it easier to “penetrate” this mother’s heart.

  I made my entrance into the crowded room, carried there on the bed I’d given birth in, holding my baby in my arms, my eyes tired and at last happy. Next to me were my defenders: on one side Carlo, on the other my sister, Maria, who had flown in from Rome for the big event.

  The reporters barraged me with questions. They seemed almost as excited as I was. After all, emotion is contagious, and wherever there’s a newborn baby everything exudes the scent of a miracle having taken place.

  “Who does he look like?”

  “Whose eyes does he have?”

  “What about his mouth?”

  “How much does he weigh?”

  “Sophia, Sophia,
how do you feel?”

  “Were you afraid?”

  “Has your milk come in?”

  “Was it more or less exciting than winning an Oscar?”

  “When do you think you’ll be heading back to the set?”

  I looked at them smiling, but then I’d bow my head over Cipi—as I had started calling him. “Quanto si’ bbello” (You’re so beautiful), I thought. His face was round, his tiny hands grasped one of my fingers. He was a bundle of warmth that felt like heaven. Everything else was a blur—it lost its importance, as if it really didn’t have anything to do with me.

  While holding a child in your arms, you can feel both strong and vulnerable at the same time. It’s an intoxicating feeling, one that makes your head spin, and that you keep within you forever.

  My existence had unexpectedly taken on a deeper meaning, a kind of stability that was both fragile and fulfilling. I was afraid to go out, worried about my little one catching cold. And I simply didn’t feel like going home yet. And so, day after day, I grew increasingly rooted to my clean white room, shielded from all danger, refusing to think about tomorrow.

  My doctor, de Watteville, gently prepared me and pushed me back out, after fifty days, which seemed to go by in a flash.

  “Sophia, you can’t stay here forever, life is waiting for the two of you out there . . .”

  At first, I just looked at him, terrified, but little by little, I gave in.

  After nine months of not being able to move, and almost two months of cocoonlike postpartum, the time had come for me to go forth and face reality. But this reality, unlike a story in a movie, had no script. My story as a mother, Cipi’s as a son, were entirely to be invented.

  I realized that I needed someone who could help me emerge from my shell so that I could go back to the world, but I found all the young women that were introduced to me to be unsuitable. My son’s potential nannies were all too showy, or else they seemed to be half-undressed, all lace and trimmings, like improbable bathing beauties. “Just where do they think they’re going? This isn’t an audition for Cinecittà,” I said to myself, incredulous at their exuberant displays. I needed someone who was reliable, calm, who understood my happiness and could focus on the baby completely. And above all, someone who wasn’t impulsive.