She had trouble having children, so when she had Sean, she felt that God had bestowed grace upon her. After she had Luca, she didn’t feel like working much. “Life is too short,” she said. That’s why she accepted the UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador job: she wanted to help children. Sometimes [after] a trip to Bangladesh or Ethiopia, she would say, “I am returning from hell. What I saw is unthinkable: children who die, women who have nothing to eat. It’s not possible.”
When she was very ill, she called and said, “You need to come now.” I went to her home in Switzerland the next day. She wasn’t eating anymore and was very weak. We sat in the entry hall, and she asked [Dutch actor and producer] Robert [Wolders] to bring down some coats. Robby came down with three men’s coats–a beige, a black and a blue. “Take the blue one,” she said, then she took it, kissed it and said, “I hope you will keep this coat all your life.” I cried during the entire flight to Paris with the coat around me.
“Since the very beginning, my aim and wish was to be an actress. The idea of being a sex symbol never occurred to me. In real life, of course, it was different; the whistles, the glances and alas, the sometimes heavy expressions of men in the street made me aware that I was exciting their imagination. Although I was disturbed by their vulgarity, I became aware that nature and my mother had made a good work.” –Sophia Loren, actress
