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Most film icons need decades and dozens of roles to build a legacy. James Dean needed three films and less than eighteen months. It remains one of the strangest, most improbable facts in Hollywood history. Nearly seventy years after his death, his brief, blazing filmography continues to define what an entire generation of actors have … Read more

James Dean loved his new Porsche 550 Spyder so much that he gave it a nickname before he had even driven it a hundred miles. He called it Little Bastard. Days later, the car he was so proud of became the site of his death. The story of that car did not end with Dean’s … Read more

When a teenage Sophia Loren met producer Carlo Ponti at a beauty pageant in the early 1950s, he was already twenty-two years her senior and married to someone else entirely. What followed was a romance so complicated it forced the two of them to leave their own country just to legally become husband and wife. … Read more

In 1962, Sophia Loren made Academy Awards history, and she wasn’t even in the room to see it happen. Too nervous to fly to Los Angeles, she stayed home in Italy, certain she had no real chance of winning. She was wrong. Loren became the first performer in Oscar history to win Best Actress for … Read more

Before she was one of the highest-paid actresses in the world, Sophia Loren was a painfully thin child in war-torn Naples, so undernourished that neighbors gave her a cruel nickname: the stick. Within little more than a decade, that same girl would be gracing magazine covers across the globe. Her transformation remains one of the … Read more

Before he was the Man with No Name, before Dirty Harry, before decades as one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars and directors, Clint Eastwood was nearly told his face wasn’t right for the camera at all. A studio executive’s blunt assessment early in his career could easily have ended things before they started. A Harsh … Read more

Clint Eastwood has spent more than six decades as one of Hollywood’s most recognizable faces. What far fewer fans know is just how large, and how private, his family life has been behind the scenes. With at least eight children born across six different relationships, Eastwood has managed something remarkable for a man of his … Read more

In 1986, Clint Eastwood traded a film set for a city council chamber, and Hollywood’s biggest action star suddenly found himself running for public office in a small California coastal town. He won. For two years, one of the most famous actors in the world spent his time not making movies, but attending zoning meetings. … Read more

Sean Connery came dangerously close to walking away from the role that would make him a legend after filming just one movie. During the making of Dr. No in 1962, frustration with the production’s shoestring budget nearly convinced him that James Bond wasn’t worth the trouble. Had he followed through, the entire franchise as we … Read more

Long before he became the definitive James Bond, Sean Connery delivered milk, watched over swimmers as a lifeguard, and polished coffins for a living. His path to Hollywood stardom was anything but glamorous. He even spent his early twenties as a competitive bodybuilder, a chapter of his life almost no one associates with the suave … Read more