Her "Best Actress" Academy Award was the first Oscar ever given for a performance in a "foreign-language" film.
Her adopted surname is a slight variation of "Toren" after the Swedish actress Märta Torén.
Her mother named her after her paternal grandmother, so when Sofia's father abandoned her, her maternal grandmother began calling her 'Lella'.
Her mother won an all-Italy Greta Garbo lookalike contest run by MGM in 1932; but, being only 17 years old, her mother wouldn't allow her to pursue her Hollywood dream. Soon after, she became pregnant with Sofia.
Husband Carlo Ponti was two years older than Sophia's mother Romilda.
Is one of five performers to win an Oscar playing a character that spoke mostly in a foreign language. The other are Marion Cotillard, Robert De Niro, Roberto Benigni and Benicio Del Toro.
Is portrayed by Sonia Aquino in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004)
Measurements: 38C-24-38 (self-described - 1955, and from Edith Head- 1957), 36D-24-37 3/4 (at age 50 - 1985) (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine)
Mentioned in Bob Dylan's song "I Shall Be Free".
Mother-in-law of Sasha Alexander and Andrea Mezaros.
Often called the "Italian Marilyn Monroe".
One of eight women, also among them Susan Sarandon and author Isabel Allende, carrying the Olympic flag at the 2006 Winter Olympic Games' opening ceremony in Turin (10 February 2006).
Owns an apartment in the Trump World Tower in New York.
Portrays herself and her mother in Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (1980) (TV)
President of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1966.
Received an honorary citizenship in her hometown of Pozzuoli, Italy, on June 22, 2005 (she gave up her Italian citizenship and became a French citizen years ago because of legal and tax problems she and her husband incurred in Italy).
She and Marcello Mastroianni appeared in 11 movies together: The Miller's Beautiful Wife (1955), Blood Feud (1978), Lucky to Be a Woman (1955), A Special Day (1977), Sunflower (1970), Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963), Marriage Italian Style (1964), The Priest's Wife (1971), Too Bad She's Bad (1954), Prêt-à-Porter (1994), and La pupa del gangster (1975). They were also friends in real life. In the early '90s, her teenage son Edoardo Ponti dated Marcello's daughter Chiara Mastroianni.
She didn't get along with Marlon Brando during the shooting of A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), especially after the day they were doing a love scene and he commented, "Did you know you have hairs up your nostrils?".