What the audience did not know about foreign film stars who were adored in the USSR: Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn and others

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The Soviet Union constantly bought many films from the West. The Soviet audience idolized the actresses who shone in these tapes. I bought homemade postcards on trains, painted portraits by hand to hang on the wall. But after perestroika, there was no time for former idols, and many had no idea how the fate of their favorite actresses developed, and someone only learned about them myths.

Gina Lollobrigida

In the fifties, she soared into the cinema sky, starring in the films "Fanfan Tulip" and "Notre Dame Cathedral". In fact, the Jewish girl Luigina - that is her real name - like many in her native Italy, wanted to become an opera singer, but fate decreed otherwise. As a result, the actress continued to act until the mid-nineties, and when the film craft became too difficult for her, she decided to realize another dream of her youth: to become a sculptor. And she did.

Among her sculptures are self-portraits starring Esmeralda and Pauline Bonaparte, a monument to the world's gypsy children with their restless childhood, a dedication to Marilyn Monroe and the mothers of the world, and much more. Lollobrigida also discovered the talent of a photo artist.

Marilyn Monroe

Monroe's career was closely followed in the USSR, in articles it was emphasized that Hollywood underestimated her as a person, preferring to see in her an empty-headed beauty, and scenes were cut out of films with her, because of which the Soviet viewer, perhaps, would also succumb to the stereotype. She spoke out in favor of black rights and condemned any discrimination in general, but these words were often deleted from her interviews. Most of all in the Soviet Union they loved one of her last films, which in our box office was called "There are only girls in jazz."

As you know, Marilyn Monroe suffered from lingering depression and anxiety disorder and committed suicide. For a long time, it was debated whether it was really suicide - given her scandalous connections with the US president, with the communists of Mexico and simply problematic communication with a number of men. In 2011, news spread across the Internet that a dying CIA agent had confessed to killing a movie star - but upon closer inspection, the news turned out to be fake. All additional investigations suggest that Marilyn did the fatal act on her own. You can, of course, say that it was brought together by those and these people (the list is long), but they are not judged for that.

Sophia Loren

Born Sofia Shikolone began her career as a model - as a teenager she was very tall and thin, which was considered more suitable for the catwalk than for the cinema. When it came to filming, for a long time, Sofia played in films that required her to actually pose in exotic, very revealing outfits. However, fame came to her with the tape "Gold of Naples", where Sophie played a Neapolitan shopkeeper. The Soviet audience, however, most of all loved "Marriage in Italian", where Marcello Mastroiani was a duet to Lauren.

Lauren never left her film career, although in the twenty-first century, few people in Russia noticed her last works. She is known for her witty aphorisms, which with age began to let go even more freely, published two books of memoirs - one of which is called purely in Italian, "Recipes and Memories", and raised two sons, one of whom became a conductor and the other a director.

Michelle Mercier

Hostage of the role of Beautiful Angelica, with whom something unpleasant always happens because of irrepressible male interest, Mercier, as soon as she did not try to diversify her roles later, still remained Angelica for everyone. As a result, the actress decided to take a time-out for a long time and returned to the cinema only at the beginning of the 2000s, and then to television series. But she perfectly knew many languages and could act in studios in different countries (and even did so).

Despite the fact that Mercier devoted her time away from cinema to her personal life, she did not find happiness in her. Four of her chosen ones in turn disappointed her. Only when she was far away in age from Angelica, Mercier learned to relate to this heroine without hostility. In general, age for many actresses became a reason to turn to the hobbies of youth, but Mercier danced in ballet in her youth - now her health would not have allowed this. And in the cinema, Charlie Chaplin personally advised her to leave dancing.

Audrey Hepburn

A fawn woman, a small participant in the Dutch resistance to the Nazis and a victim of the blockade, Audrey Hepburn (née Ruston) caused a wave of imitation in the Soviet Union among tiny brunettes, finally giving them their own model of beauty and grace. Two of her favorite films in the USSR are "Roman Holiday" and "How to Steal a Million". In addition, many agree that she is the best foreign Natasha Rostova.

Hepburn was very afraid to remain ugly aging in human memory and gave up cinema when she decided that she had lost her youth. After that, she devoted her whole life to charitable and social activities: she fought against hunger and the lack of clean drinking water in Africa and Asia, organized mass vaccinations, obtained building material so that schools were built in remote villages of Latin America. In the early nineties, she died of cancer.

Brigitte Bardot

This actress never disappeared from the news, although she left her career in the seventies. She is known for her outspoken statements on many topics, from which we learned that Bardo was always childfree and gave birth to a son under pressure, that her husband was a tyrant, that she is an eco-activist and opposed to accepting Muslim refugees to Europe - among other things, for the fact that killing rams is a mandatory annual ritual.

In addition, Bardo, a homophobic, was at the center of a scandal for the castration of someone else's animal and is suspected of openly pro-Hitler views for speaking about the "mixing of genes" that immigration leads to. At the peak of her career, Bardot managed to visit the official "Marianne" - the female image of France, and since then has behaved with the appropriate aplomb. She refuses to vote in the presidential election until one of the presidents introduces animal rescue into their program. She wrote a letter to Sarah Palin condemning the construction of oil rigs, to the Queen of Denmark - with a call to stop the slaughter of dolphins in the Faroe Islands (a very harsh northern place where it is virtually impossible to breed livestock), to the Minister of Culture of France - with a demand to exclude bullfighting from the list of cultural heritage … In general, we will obviously hear about it more than once.

Ingrid Bergman

Surprisingly, one of the most beloved films of the Soviet audience with Bergman was not one of those where she is a young flower, but, contrary to stereotypes, one of her last works - "Murder on the Orient Express". But what passed by the Soviet audience was the film "Anastasia", where Bergman played a girl who was passed off as a surviving princess. Alas, few people know that there was no “after career” for Bergman - in the last films she starred as a cancer patient, and her career was cut short by death.

Hema Malini

The USSR adored Indian films - bright, colorful, musical, with always triumphant morality, and the most beloved actress was Hema Malini, and her most beloved films were Zita and Gita and Revenge and Law. Since Indian films are guided by the values and interests of Indian society, they always have age-related roles, so Malini has never stopped acting in films.

Throughout her life, she also promoted and celebrated the career of a dancer, demanding respect from society for this hard work (from the fact that prostitutes also performed dances in India, the artists faced constant disrespect). From time to time, Malini produces some projects. She also took up politics in the late nineties and even was the general secretary of the Indian People's Party in the early tens. Despite the fact that for years in all her films, Malini broadcast the ideas of progress and mutual tolerance, she nevertheless joined the Conservative Party, also known for involvement in the pogroms of the Muslim inhabitants of India (Islam is one of the traditional religions here).

It is interesting to follow not only the life of foreign artists. Short Film Careers of Captain Grant's Children: How the Fates of Young Actors Developed.