In Loving Memory of Anita Ekberg

Born September 29, 1931 - Passed Away January 11, 2015

This memorial website was created in the memory of Anita Ekberg , born in Malmö, Skåne on September 29, 1931 and passed away on January 11, 2015 at 84 years of age.

Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg (born September 29, 1931 in Malmö, Skåne; died January 11, 2015) was a Swedish former model and actress.

A 1950 Miss Sweden—she competed in the Miss Universe pageant—Ekberg is best-known for her role as Sylvia in La Dolce Vita, directed by Federico Fellini.

Ethel Merman dubbed the well-endowed Ekberg (measurements 40-22-36) "the thinking man's dunce cap: two of them." Bob Hope joked that her parents had received the Nobel Prize for architecture as she was touring with him and William Holden to entertain U.S. troops in 1954.

That tour led her to a contract with John Wayne's Batjac Productions. Wayne cast her in Blood Alley (1955) as a Chinese woman, a role that earned her a Golden Globe award.

Although many of her films are largely forgotten now, she appeared in several notable features: the low-budget Screaming Mimi (1958) directed by Gert Oswald who already used her the previous year opposite Sterling Hayden in Valerie; War and Peace where she played Henry Fonda's unfaithful wife, Princess Elena. She also appeared in two Frank Tashlin films with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin: Artists and Models (1955) and Hollywood or Bust (1956). In Back from Eternity, (1956) she was cast as Robert Ryan's leading lady.

However it was Federico Fellini who gave Ekberg her greatest role in La Dolce Vita in 1960, in which she played the unattainable "dream woman" opposite Marcello Mastroianni; then Boccaccio '70 in 1960, a movie that also featured Sophia Loren. Fellini would call her back for two other films: I Clowns (1972), and Intervista (1987), where she played herself in a reunion scene with Mastroianni.

Fellini aside, she was not offered many notable good films in the 60's. Four for Texas by Robert Aldrich (1963) with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Ursula Andress, and Woman Times Seven by Vittorio de Sica in 1967, with Shirley MacLaine. Two films in 1966, The Alphabet Murders again with Frank Tashlin, and Way...Way Out, the latter introducing Linda Harrison in her first movie; and a small role in If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium in 1969.

Ekberg was never especially regarded for her acting skills, and she still managed to pose in several sizzling semi-nude layouts for various men's magazines during the time, including Modern Man (July 1956), Nugget (June 1957) and Playboy (August 1956).