Oscar-winning Italian actress Sophia Loren hospitalised after fall

ROME: Oscar-winning Italian film star Sophia Loren, a national icon and one of the most enduring movie divas of the 20th century, has had surgery after a fall in her home in Geneva, her spokesperson said on Monday.

The operation on Loren, 89, "went well and now she needs to rest and everything will be resolved," the spokesperson told Reuters in an email.

He gave no details but said Italian media reports were correct. The reports said she had an accidental fall in her home in Geneva on Sunday and had suffered a broken hip.

Loren has won two Oscars, the first in 1961 for her tragic portrayal of a war-time mother in Vittorio De Sica's neo-realistic classic "La Ciociara" (Two Women). The second was a career award in 1991.

Some of her most memorable and successful film were made with fellow Italian co-star Marcello Mastroianni, who died in 1996. She has also co-stared with Cary Grant, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra and Paul Newman, among other 20th century film giants.

Her most recent starring role was in 2020's "La Vita Davanti a Se" (The Life Ahead).

In it, she plays a former prostitute and Holocaust survivor who looks after children of working prostitutes in the southern Italian city of Bari and helps an orphaned Senegalese migrant boy who had robbed her.

It was directed by her son, Edoardo Ponti.

News of the fall and hospitalisation was first reported on the Facebook page of Sophia Loren Restaurant, a chain of venues that bears her name.

It said she had been planning to open a new one, the fourth in Italy, in Bari on Tuesday.