Sophia Loren honored by the academy; Billy Crystal hosts

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Sophia Loren, small-town girl turned international movie star, was honored Wednesday night in Beverly Hills at an event hosted by Billy Crystal and attended by the likes of John Travolta, Eva Mendes, Loren’s ‘Nine’ director, Rob Marshall, and her sons Carlo and Edoardo Ponti.

‘America has always accepted me, even in the beginning when I came here for the first time,’ Loren, 76, told The Times’s Susan King recently. ‘I was very young and they gave me a wonderful cocktail party. Louella Parsons and Elsa Maxwell and Jayne Mansfield were there. I will never forget those days.

‘For me, Hollywood was a fairy tale, coming from where I came from, a little town. It was something that I never expected.’

‘An Academy Tribute to Sophia Loren’ featured clips from Loren movies including, among others, ‘Two Women,’ the 1961 foreign-language effort for which she won the lead actress Oscar, and 1964’s ‘Marriage Italian Style,’ for which she was nominated.

Click the pics to see more photos from the event honoring the life and work of Sophia Loren.

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— Christie D’Zurilla

Top photo: Sophia Loren with sons composer Carlo Ponti, left, and director Edoardo Ponti, right, during arrivals at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ tribute to her in Beverly Hills on Thursday. Credit: Fred Prouser / Reuters.

Left photo: Loren with tribute host Billy Crystal. Credit: Jason Redmond / EPA.