Anita Ekberg, the stunning actress who starred in Federico Fellini’s 1960 film La Dolce Vita, died Sunday morning at the age of 83.
The Swedish-Italian film icon died in Rocca di Papa, a small town southeast of Rome, due to complications from a longtime illness, the New York Times reported. Ekberg had recently been hospitalized.
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![Circa 1960. Vintage colour transparency. Cinema: A portrait of the actress Anita Ekberg. Circa 1960. Vintage colour transparency. Cinema: A portrait of the actress Anita Ekberg.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/anita-eckberg-la-dolce-vita-004.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
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Ekberg, known for her sensuality and beauty, rose to global fame after years of small film and TV roles and modeling when Fellini cast her as a Marilyn Monroe-type American actress who visits Rome, in 1960’s La Dolce Vita. The classic scene in which her character dances in Rome’s Trevi fountain before a thunderstruck Marcello Mastroianni soon became one of cinema’s most celebrated images.
Ekberg starred in over 40 films and won the 1956 Golden Globe for most promising newcomer — a now-defunct award category — which she shared with Victoria Shaw and Dana Wynter. That year, Ekberg starred alongside Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda in King Vidor’s War and Peace, following a small role in the film Blood Alley the year before.
[NYT]
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