Sophia Loren Receives Her Star on the Walk of Fame in Almería, Spain

On 16 November 2017, Italian cinema legend Sophia Loren returned to Almería for the first time in 46 years, receiving a gold star on the city’s Walk of Fame and the prestigious Almería Tierra de Cine award at the Festival Internacional de Cine de Almería (Fical). Loren had last visited the province in 1971 to film La Mortadella (released internationally as White Sister), in which she played a hospital nun who falls for a communist patient.

Loren, then 83, is the first performer to win an Academy Award for a non-English-language film, her Oscar for Two Women (dir. Vittorio De Sica, 1961) is among the 73 international awards she has accumulated over a career of more than 100 films. She also holds a Special Honorary Oscar (1991), five Golden Globes and a BAFTA. She joins Omar Sharif, Ridley Scott, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Catherine Deneuve on the Almería Walk of Fame, all of them tied to the province’s extraordinary cinematic history, which includes Lawrence of Arabia, the Leone Westerns and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.