“... The two big advantages I had at birth were to have been born wise and to have been born in poverty...It gave me one big advantage: none of my troubles or problems as an adult could throw me.”
Sophia Loren was born in a charity ward for unmarried women in Rome in 1934. Her father Riccardo Scicolone officially recognized the child, but refused to marry the mother. Though her mother had a hard time raising her, Loren still has vivid memories of her younger years. “When I was a child, fear was common to my life — fear of having nothing to eat, fear of other children taunting me at school because I was illegitimate (私生的), and particularly fear of the big bombers appearing overhead and dropping their deadly burst from the sky.”
Loren was a very young girl, when she saw the first Hollywood films. “I was filled with the feeling that that’s what I was put on earth to do, to act, to let out whatever feelings I had inside.”
However, it took a long time before Sophia was offered her first role in a film. She failed the screen tests one after the other, and it seemed as if there was no way for her to become an actress. What the cameramen could not see at first, was that her inner beauty made her stunning. Remembering the difficulties of the early days of her career, Sophia said, “I was so boldly confident about myself... I have never judged myself by other people’s standards. I would get to wherever I was destined to go and try to alter my fate.”
Sophia’s acting career began at the age of eighteen in 1952 with her role in a film “ Africa Under the Seas”. The film did not make a sensation, but did give a good start to the young actress. The dream of a skinny little girl, sitting in a dark movie house, was finally to come true.（10分）

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