Sophia LorenIt has been said that Sophia Loren was and is one of the most beautiful women in the world, but Sophia did not have an easy time achieving Hollywood star status. He began his life in poverty, lived and saw the horrors of World War II. She became a beauty queen and from there tried her hand at acting. He acted in a hundred films and won an Academy Award in his lifetime. Sofia Scicolone was born in Rome, Italy on September 20, 1934. She would eventually change her name. She used a different spelling of her name, Sophia, and tried the last name Lazarus. After one film he decided that Loren would be the best choice and stuck to his decision. Sophia was born to an unmarried woman named Romilda Villani; her father did not want to marry her mother but eventually signed an affidavit confirming that Sofia was his daughter. Sophia soon had a little sister named Maria. Sophia's father was also Maria's father; this time, however, he refused to sign the affidavit for Maria because he no longer wanted to pay child support. This meant he could use his father's surname. In Italy, at that time, a child couldn't even start school if he didn't have his father's surname, so Maria couldn't go to school and was ostracized because she didn't have a proper name. World War II broke out and Sophia the city was a target for bombs. At night Sophia and her family had to take refuge in a railway tunnel and soon the city was evacuated. The family moved to Naples and stayed with distant relatives during the rest of the war. Sophia was old enough to understand what was going on around her. She would sit on the balcony and watch what was going on around her. She was not unaware of the horrors of war, but once the war was over she found something else to look at; the films. She absolutely fell in love with what she saw on the screen and wished that she too could one day become an actress. She didn't care about fortune and fame, she just wanted to be like the people she saw on the screen. Sophia was growing up and was now a teenager. She was growing into a beautiful young woman