Anita Ekberg died today at 83. She came from Sweden to America to enter the Miss Universe pageant and by the mid-1950s, after several modeling jobs, she finally broke into films. She had a small part in the film Blood Alley in 1955 with John Wayne and Lauren Bacall. She appeared alongside the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedy act in Artists and Models the same year and in Hollywood or Bust in 1956. For a while she was publicized as “Paramount’s Marilyn Monroe.” In 1957, she starred in the British drama Interpol with Victor Mature. In 1960 Federico Fellini gave Ekberg her the role of a lifetime in La Dolce Vita where she played the unattainable “dream woman” of of Marcello Mastroianni. Nevertheless as the years passed, the outspoken actress was frequently quoted as saying that it was Fellini who owed his success to HER, not the other way around.
“They would like to keep up the story that Fellini made me famous, Fellini discovered me.”
Ekberg did not live in Sweden after the early 50s and later in life said she would not move back to Sweden before her death since she would be buried there. RIP one of THE great beauties of film.
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