Sophia Loren Ends Big-Screen Hiatus to Star in Son's Film (Report)

Sophia Loren

The Italian icon's next film, "The Human Voice," will be directed by Edoardo Ponti.

ROME – Legendary Italian actress Sophia Loren says she is headed back to the big screen for her first starring role in nearly a decade.

Italian newspapers reported Friday that the 78-year-old icon would star in La voce umana (The Human Voice), which will be directed by her 40-year-old son, Edoardo Ponti. The story is based on a one-person play first performed in 1930, written by the French poet and writer Jean Cocteau.
Unlike the stage version, which was written in French, the screen version of the story will be performed in Neapolitan dialect. The film will be set in Rome, Naples and Ostia, the port city just west of Rome, with shooting expected to take around three weeks, starting this month.
The role will be Loren’s first acting work of any kind in three years, when she starred in the Italian television movie La mia casa e’ piena di specchi (My House if Full of Mirrors), an autobiographical film in which she played her own mother and Margareth Made played the young Loren. And it will be Loren’s first starring role since Peperoni ripieni e pesci in faccia (Too Much Romance … It’s Time For Stuffed Peppers), a comedy directed by Lina Wertmueller, from 2004.
It will not be the first time Ponti directed his mother in a film: she also starred in his 2002 drama Cuori estrani (Between Strangers), Ponti’s feature film debut.