- [Edoardo] So she left you in Rome by herself at 15?
- Not by myself, with my cousins.
- [Edoardo] With your cousins?
- Oh yes.
- Because she felt that you had a passion for this
or because it was a question of trying to get some money?
- It was a dream for every girl.
It was not really a passion but dreams here and there
and wanting to really live a better life.
(upbeat music)
- Were you scared at 15?
I mean your granddaughter, my daughter is 14.
- [Sophia] Yeah.
- I couldn't imagine Lucia at 15 in one year
being by herself in a big city
trying to make it.
How did it make you feel?
- No I was anxious,
but I mean if you have no nobody to take care of you,
you can be anxious just without you know,
I am anxious yes,
I am afraid, yes.
- You deal with it.
- And who is going to help me?
Nobody, so shut up.
So I had to shut up and stay with my cousin
that I didn't know not very well,
I didn't know them very well.
(speaking in Italian)
But they were very helpful because we know
they give you a place to sleep
and something to eat in the morning.
It's wonderful because then you think you have a family,
but it was not so
because they thought about their own family.
So that was okay for me.
(speaking in Italian)
So I started to live there and started to know a little bit
people going into offices,
sometimes they started to call me just to say,
"Well we have this, do you want to come to the office?"
- For work as an extra?
- Extra, always, not as an actress.
- Just as an extra.
- So I did, I did.
So I started to know many, many people, many people.
And that's a little by little, I,
the first film I made as an extra,
it was (speaking in Italian)
with Elizabeth Taylor was there.
- Did you ever tell Elizabeth Taylor
that you were an extra in one of her movies
when you met her?
- She was never with me.
- No but when you ended up meeting her as Sophia Loren?
- No.
So I started to put little money on the side
and then I started to have not a car,
but (speaking in Italian).
- To go onto on the tram.
- Tram, si, si to go to (speaking in Italian).
A that time, my mother had come back
to be with me,
to see what I was doing.
And we were making for us wonderful money.
(speaking in Italian)
- Some people, there's that myth of the overnight success,
there's that myth that people say
overnight I became the star.
When people met you
when you were 15, 16, 17,
did they already feel my goodness
this person is unbelievable?
There's such a beauty, magnetism, magic,
or it wasn't like this,
they slowly discovered it?
How was that first reaction when people met you?
- Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
- [Edoardo] Nothing?
- No, because when you don't have money,
when you are a little bit maybe miserable
people even look at you in another way
because the expression is not the same
when you have a lot of money,
you have a luminous expression.
There there was no luminous expression.
- So you were, so you had a certain insecurity about you?
- Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
(speaking in Italian)
- The movie "The Life Ahead"
tells the story of two survivors.
One side there is a Madame Rosa,
who is a Holocaust survivor.
And on the other side,
you have Momo, whose mother died when he was very young.
Are you a survivor?
(speaking in Italian)
- Do you see yourself as a survivor in life?
(speaking in Italian)
Do you see yourself as a survivor?
- Yes.
- How?
- To live, to live, to be somebody,
to be able to survive.
If I didn't have the chance
to have all these wonderful and positive things ahead of me
without knowing, of course.
- You know, you started at 15.
Is there anything that your wisdom
now that you've gone through life
having learned so many things,
is there anything that you can help young actors with,
that you could impart that sort of wisdom with?
- It all depends how you feel inside.
It all depends
how do you respect yourself.
It all depends on always positive and wonderful things,
but it's very difficult to have them all.
- [Edoardo] So self-respect is important?
- Oh yes.
(speaking in Italian)
- [Edoardo] Was it difficult to be directed by me?
- Always, always, always.
- Because?
You can say the truth.
- You see inside out.
I can see from your face
if it's okay, what I'm answering, if it's not okay.
So I just stop a little bit.
But the color in the face don't change,
no because I've had so many of these things
that I'm accustomed to it, so it's okay.
You are free.
It's okay.
- Is it more difficult working with your son
or with another director that isn't part of your family?
(speaking in Italian)
- You are you.
There's nobody like you.
There's your brother and you, of course.
- The seminal relationship that you had with a director
was with Vittorio De Sica
What did he teach you?
- To be myself and not to be,
not to be afraid of the things that you see
when you're shooting.
Just think about the character you have to play,
be serious, very simple, very simple.
Be yourself if you have to.
Otherwise you are,
you have to face the character and you will be,
you will be your character
that you have to play in the film.
(speaking in Italian)
- In this character,
Madame Rosa has this amazing combination of drama,
but also on the edges of the character,
there's always a certain comedic tone.
(speaking in Italian)
- Which is really the hallmark
of a certain Neapolitan identity.
- Of course.
- So talk about what being Neapolitan means to you
and how it helped you in the building of this character,
but really in your career as an actor?
- Oh but you become yourself.
I mean if you are Neapolitan and you are born a Neapolitan,
you are born with everything like this inside of you.
(speaking in Italian)
- And it comes naturally.
It comes even when you speak,
even when you say things,
you always think that you're saying a serious thing,
but inside of you you also say
I would like to say it in the other way,
but shut up Sophia.
This is something yes
because you like very much the comic side of life,
let's say of life.
And it's beautiful because you spend your time sometimes
in thinking about silly things,
but you think they're silly,
but they are not silly,
they are very important for you.
And I am Neapolitan I mean 100%.
Even though I was born in Roma,
but nothing to do with it,
nothing to do with it.
- When you start thinking of a character,
there are two ways that actors approach a character.
They start from the inside of the character
and then go outwards
with the costumes, the hair, the makeup,
or some actors start with the look
and that look starts to inform the inside.
Who are you?
Do you start first with the appearance
and then that informs
or you start first within and then the appearance?
- Both, both.
- It's a combination for you?
- You cannot split the two things, impossible.
- Was there a moment in the shooting that you felt
now I know her, now I feel comfortable,
now I know what I'm doing in this role?
- Well you always think about that
in the beginning-
- Of a shoot, yes.
- When you make the test
and when you start to have a dress on
and when you start the makeup,
little by little you understand
that you are understanding the character
while you're doing all this
because it's a kind of a preparation.
It's all so much alive, everything is so much alive.
Every gesture that you make, you think about the film.
But I don't want to admit it because it seems silly.
But no, it's not silly, it's true.
When you have to do something
that you know that it's very important
for your career in your life,
then whenever you move, whenever you talk,
whenever you do things in life,
you know why you are always so keen
about knowing what you're doing,
because you are preparing yourself
to be able to be that one.
(speaking in Italian)
- What I very much love and admire
is that the audience gets to see
in the beginning of the movie that Sophia Loren,
or the characters that you've portrayed in the past
that they love,
the vitality of the character,
the strength of the character,
the comedy of the character.
But gradually as the movie progresses,
there is an illness that comes inside of you.
And there's one specific scene in the movie
that we shot together,
where you have this so-called mental paralysis
under the rain.
(speaking in Italian)
- And so you have to not move your face anymore
because you're like frozen,
you're mentally frozen.
And when we turned on the rain and you were,
because we had studied it-
- Don't say it.
- [Edoardo] What?
- Don't blink.
- [Edoard] Yeah, do you remember?
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
- I will never forget it.
My God, all the rain all over your face.
- Let me set it up. - Don't blink?
- Hold on, hold on.
So we were rehearsing the scene
and we hadn't turned on the rain and your face was perfect
because we went to a doctor
and he showed us images and videos
of people suffering those symptoms.
So we really made sure that it was authentic
and legitimate medically and there was no rain
and it was all good.
But when the rain started coming,
obviously the droplets fell on your eyes
and you started to blink.
And when you blinked, it looked like you were too present.
And I asked you, so what did I ask you?
- Don't blink.
And I didn't blink.
- How did you not blink?
You did it.
Because when I was cutting the movie,
when I was starting to cut that scene,
I was like, she's gonna blink and it's gonna really,
I tell you if she blinks, it's gonna be such a problem.
And we were looking at the scene in the rushes,
and you did not blink.
It's physically impossible not to blink.
- I still remember.
- [Edoard] But how did you not blink?
- I will never forget that moment in my life.
- [Edoard] But how did you not blink?
- I don't know.
It's because I'm a good actress.
(laughing)
Just happened, just happened.
(kids mumbling)
(speaking in Italian)
- You're known in your career for emotional scenes.
You're known for expressing yourself emotionally
and that emotion communicates a lot.
Are those emotional scenes hard for you
or do you access that emotion quite easily?
- I don't sleep at night
because if you want to do it well,
you have to really know what you're doing.
(speaking in Italian)
- You really have to start thinking why you're doing that.
If there is something that really upsets you
and just think about that.
It's the kind of work that you have to do
because it doesn't,
when people look at you in on the set they say,
well it's easy, she did it.
No, no, no, no, you can't sleep at night, you are careful.
You have to know what you're doing,
otherwise it doesn't come very easy, it doesn't.
(speaking in Italian)
- [Edoard] It is no secret that you are 86 years old.
(speaking in Italian)
- Everybody knows. - Tell everybody.
- No but now that we have the internet,
we can't lie about our age anymore.
- I look really young, a little young.
- 86 is the new 56 for sure.
- [Sophia] Okay.
- But you know-
- I don't like you anymore.
It's like don't blink same thing.
- So you started at 15.
- [Sophia] Yeah.
- You are now 86.
You've been doing this for
- A lifetime.
- For 71 years.
71 years you've been acting.
And you've been essentially on top of your game
for 71 years.
What is, in your opinion,
the secret to the longevity of your career?
- Well it's my life.
- [Edoardo] So you had no plan B, you had no alternative?
This was what you wanted to do?
- Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
(happy music)