NY Times 9/19/03 Interview with Sophia Loren

Eight Months in Bed Wasn't Enough?

By Joyce Wadler

    For the most part, she leaves the conversation to her son. He insists he acquired his stars because they liked his script. He also says he based much of the woman his mother plays on her.
    "Extremely vulnerable, extremely fragile and one who has an undercurrent of great strength," Mr. Ponti says. "Slow, determined strength. Sometimes I use the analogy for my mother, `She has the strength of a drop of water.' In other words, if some piece of water will fall on granite, a drop over years, it's going to carve a hole."
    The mother laughs.
    Sounds as if you were nagging him, Ms. Loren is told.
    "Oh, no, no," she says.
    How is Ms. Loren fragile and vulnerable?
    "Even though I look aggressive, I look very, very much sure of myself, Ms. Loren says. "I'm not at all like this."
    Mr. Ponti tries to explain: "It is for me this great, great sensitivity that she has in a way. I think that what we have to talk about is the hair-trigger emotionality of this person, of really being so honest with her heart, with her feelings, which in essence makes a person vulnerable."
    He gestures to his mother, who is sitting with her hands clasped in her lap.
    "Look at her body language now," Mr. Ponti says.
    Ms. Loren laughs nervously.
    "Please," she says softly, in a way so that one is not certain this should continue.
    "What does that say?" the son presses.
    That she is trying to keep herself from speaking and let her son have the floor?
    "I think she is bracing herself, because we talk about her and it makes her shy in a certain way," Mr. Ponti says.
    Later, the two are asked about those who said Mr. Ponti was able to cast his stars through his mother's influence.
    "There are always bad people around," Ms. Loren says.