Anita Ekberg, sex symbol and La Dolce Vita star, is dead at 83

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last updated 12 January 2015

Actress Anita Ekberg, a former Miss Sweden who won international fame for playing actress Sylvia Rank in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960), died on Sunday in a town outside Rome, her adopted home. She was 83.

Ekberg had been in several Hollywood films — starting with Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953) — before Fellini cast her as Rank, and was already a sex symbol. But La Dolce Vita shot her into international fame — specifically, a scene in which she wades into Rome's Trevi Fountain in a strapless dress, luring in a journalist played by Marcello Mastroianni. The scene shocked audiences and earned condemnation from the Vatican, but she was unmoved.

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Ekberg fell on hard times in her later years, reportedly penniless, her Rome villa damaged in a fire, and confined to a wheelchair after one of her Great Danes knocked her down. She was married twice, divorced since 1975, had a string of affairs with famous men, and had no children. She was a bit lonely late in life, "but I have no regrets," she told Rome's Corriere Delle Sera on her 80th birthday. "I have loved, cried, been mad with happiness. I have won and I have lost." Watch the famous Trevi Fountain scene below. --Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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