Sofia Costanza Brigida Villani Scicolone, known professionally as Sophia Loren, is an Italian actress, active in her native country and the United States. With a career spanning over 70 years, she was named by the American Film Institute as one of the greatest stars of classical Hollywood cinema and is one of the last surviving major stars from the era. Loren is also the only remaining living person to appear on AFI's list of the 50 greatest stars of American film history, positioned 21st.

Classical Hollywood cinema is a term used in film criticism to describe both a narrative and visual style of filmmaking that first developed in the 1910s to 1920s during the later years of the silent film era. It then became characteristic of American cinema during the Golden Age of Hollywood, between roughly 1927 and 1960. It eventually became the most powerful and pervasive style of filmmaking worldwide.