There were rumours, too, of infidelities on both sides and of a rift during Ponti’s final years, but Sophia insists he was the ‘great love of my life’.When asked if she is ever likely to marry again she shakes her head vehemently. It would be impossible to love anyone else.’Wry, funny and wise, she has, she says, a very full life.Intelligent, ravishing and witty (she once defended her decision not to take off her clothes in a film by saying ‘when Sophia Loren is naked, there is a lot of nakedness’), she was pursued by some of the most eligible actors of the day, but insisted that she had ‘no intention of giving myself to any other man’ but Ponti.

And although Loren was making films decades before her 40-year-old son was born, she seemed to be paying close attention to what he was saying and taking his guidance as they wandered around the street market.(1961), right It is this spirit of optimism – of looking forward rather than back – that contributed to her decision to take on a cameo role in Rob Marshall’s highly anticipated film version of the musical Nine – loosely based on Federico Fellini’s autobiographical 1963 movie 81⁄2.