Lollobrigida, 95, plans comeback as Eurosceptic in Italian election

Gina Lollobrigida – a star in films with Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn and Sean Connery – is a candidate with a Eurosceptic party, which opposes sending weapons to Ukraine.

Gina Lollobrigida meets fans at a press conference in 1999. Picture: Fiona Hamilton

A former Hollywood diva once dubbed the world’s most beautiful woman is standing as a candidate in Italy’s September election as she seeks to join a long list of celebrities, from porn stars to famous architects, who have entered Italian politics.

Gina Lollobrigida, 95, who starred in films with Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn and Sean Connery, is a candidate with the tiny Eurosceptic Sovereign and Popular Italy party, which opposes sending weapons to Ukraine.

“Gina will be a great ambassador for Italy,” said her fellow running mate Antonio Ingroia, a former mafia-busting magistrate who is also Lollobrigida’s lawyer.

After conquering Hollywood in the 1950s, the actress took up sculpture and has recently sparred in court with her son, who wants control of her estate, claiming she fell under the spell of a young male assistant who plundered her fortune.

Lollobrigida has stood by the assistant and now hopes to enter parliament to change Italy’s laws, which allow courts to seize the wealth of the elderly if they are deemed incapable of managing it.

“Gina is perfectly lucid and able to manage her estate,” Mr Ingroia said.

Gina Lollobrigida in Hollywood in 2018. Picture: AFP

Gina Lollobrigida in Moscow in 2003. Picture: AP

If she is elected, Lollobrigida will follow in the footsteps of other celebrity politicians including Senator Renzo Piano, 84, the architect who designed the Shard in London, and Gregorio de Falco, 57, the coastguard official who famously shouted at the captain of the sinking Costa Concordia cruise ship to “get back on board, damn it”.

Italy’s former leading pornography actress, Ilona Staller, 70, also served as an MP in the 1980s after posing topless at election rallies.

Silvio Berlusconi was a well-known media mogul and football club owner when he was first elected prime minister in 1994. Later convicted of tax evasion, he was ejected from the senate in 2013 and banned from office for six years, but is now vying to return to parliament as part of a right-wing alliance with Matteo Salvini, leader of the League and a former minister in previous coalitions, and Giorgia Meloni, who leads the Brothers of Italy party, which is garnering widespread support.

The favourite to become prime minister next month, Ms Meloni, 45, distanced herself from her party’s fascist roots last week in a video issued in English, French and Spanish, but confirmed at the weekend that she would keep a flame symbol associated with fascism in her party logo.

Her Facebook message stating she was “proud” of the symbol drew 27,000 likes in 24 hours.

Enrico Letta, 55, leader of the centre-left Democratic Party, put out his own video in English, French and Spanish on Saturday, accusing Ms Meloni’s alliance of hostility to the EU and recalled how Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister and a “friend and ally of the Italian right”, had used his veto to oppose EU sanctions against Russia and European migration policies.

Ms Meloni counterattacked by criticising the Democrats for taking part in Italy’s past two governments thanks to political deal-making. “Years and years in government without winning an election,” she said.

Italy has had a long run of technical governments or elections that have produced no clear winner, meaning the last prime minister who actually stood as a candidate for the role was Mr Berlusconi in 2008.

“Meloni has been in opposition for a long time and the sentiment among voters is ‘Let’s give her a chance’,” said Roberto D’Alimonte, a professor of politics at Luiss University in Rome. “Change is the magic word in politics in the UK, US and Italy, and she has not been tainted.”

The Times