La Dolce Vita Actress Anita Ekberg Dies at 83

La Dolce Vita actress Anita Ekberg dies at 83

Posted by TBN_Staff On 01/12/2015

(29 September 1931 – 11 January 2015)

Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg was a Swedish actress, model, and sex symbol, active primarily in Italy. She is best known for her role as Sylvia in the Federico Fellini film La Dolce Vita (1960), which features a scene of her cavorting in Rome's Trevi Fountain alongside Marcello Mastroianni.

Both of Ekberg's marriages were to actors. She was wed to Anthony Steel from 1956 until their divorce in 1959 and to Rik Van Nutter from 1963 until their divorce in 1975. In one interview, she said she wished she had a child, but stated the opposite on another occasion.

Ekberg was often outspoken in interviews, e.g., naming famous people she couldn’t bear. She was also frequently quoted as saying that it was Fellini who owed his success to her, not the other way around: "They would like to keep up the story that Fellini made me famous, Fellini discovered me", she said in a 1999 interview with The New York Times.

Ekberg did not live in Sweden after the early 1950s and rarely visited the country. However, she welcomed Swedish journalists into her house outside Rome and in 2005 appeared on the popular radio program Sommar, and talked about her life. She stated in an interview that she would not move back to Sweden before her death since she would be buried there.

On 19 July 2009, she was admitted to the San Giovanni Hospital in Rome after falling ill in her home in Genzano according to a medical official in the hospital's neurosurgery department. Despite her condition's not being serious, Ekberg was put under observation in the facility. Ekberg had been living in Italy for many years, at that point.

In December 2011, it was reported that the 80-year-old Ekberg was "destitute" following three months in a hospital with a broken thigh in Rimini, during which stay her home was robbed and badly damaged in a fire. Ekberg applied for help from the Fellini Foundation, which also found itself in difficult financial straits.

Anita Ekberg died on 11 January 2015, at age 83, at the clinic San Raffaele in Rocca di Papa, in Castelli Romani, Italy. Her death was caused by complications from a longtime illness.

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