What '60s Star Sophia Loren Looks Like Today

Sophia Loren spent roughly 75 years being photographed, and she looked stunning through all of them. She also didn't seem to mind the exposure, though she does now find the frequency of the modern selfie culture a tad overbearing. Now in her nineties, the Neapolitan icon lives a more laid-back life in Geneva, surfacing so rarely that every fresh image of her is an event unto itself. One of the clearest recent looks came courtesy of her 90th birthday on September 20, 2024, when Giorgio Armani — who would pass away a year later at 91 — shared footage from her celebration dinner.

There was also the sighting months earlier in May 2024. Loren was photographed leaving lunch at Cipriani in a blue leopard-print blazer. She was wearing tinted glasses with a dark nude lipstick, and her auburn hair was let loose in curls. More importantly, however, her face was still unmistakably the one from the 1950s, though one that highlighted Loren's stunning transformation through the long years. This was also her first major appearance after that September 2023 fall inside her Geneva home, which fractured her hip and femur. Loren was walking with a cane, also a lingering consequence of the fall.

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Loren marked her 91st birthday at home. Her son Carlo Ponti Jr. took to Instagram to celebrate it, writing: "Rockin' it in Geneva on my mother Sophia Loren's 91st birthday!!!" Loren hasn't taken a film role since "The Life Ahead" in 2020, directed by her other son Edoardo Ponti. The scarcity has real weight, though, because if you ask the legendary industry icon herself, she has no intention of slowing down, especially not on account of a number on a birth certificate or something as ordinary as getting older.

There's a reason a new Sophia Loren sighting carries more weight than any old celebrity outing, and it has nothing to do with skincare or how amazing she looks at her age. On June 15, 1999, the American Film Institute unveiled its ranking of the 50 greatest American screen legends. The list incorporated 25 men and 25 women, performers of the highest caliber, voted on by more than 1,800 people across the film community. Loren landed at No. 21 among the women, between icons Lauren Bacall and Jean Harlow.

The roster has stood unchanged since then, but what has changed is the fact that the names have been going out one at a time. Kirk Douglas, No. 17, died in February 2020, aged 103. Sidney Poitier, No. 22, died in January 2022, at 94. Sophia Loren's favorite movie roles in her enviable filmography still stand among the finest performances of the last century. Yet, she is the only name left. And that's no hyperbole. The woman heading out of a West Hollywood restaurant in leopard print is the sole surviving entry on the industry's own official register of its greatest stars. Hers is one a photographer can still walk up to — which is why a lunch outing is more than a lunch outing.

Loren has lived a long and tragic life, but she remains unbowed in the face of it. In a November 2024 interview with Deadline, she said: "I don't want to think about legacy, I want to think about my next movie. I'll think of legacy once I retire, and I hope never to retire." Fair enough. Legacy is what the other 49 have. Loren insists on the present tense.