SOPHIA SO GOOD

Sophia Loren inhabits such a high-spec level of superstardom that she doesn’t even know The Rolling Stones wrote a song about her.

“Who?” she says, a disembodied, heavily accented voice calling from her home in Geneva. “The Rolling Stones,” I repeat. There follows a puzzled silence.

The band’s ode to Sophia is on the bonus disc of 2010’s remastered Exile on Main St, a double album originally recorded in the early ’70s, around the time when – by implicit and infatuated international consensus – Sophia had artfully dodged the threat of being given ever-diminishing roles in the mould of “exotic hottie” by Hollywood, earning the rightful title, Screen Goddess.

But the song isn’t ringing any bells today. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards may be household names worldwide, but maybe not in the Loren household. “I know who The Rolling Stones are,” she says. “I’m not stupid! But I didn’t know about this song. Really? What is the title?”

Somewhere within range of her telephone speaker is the younger of her two sons, Edoardo Ponti, 48. He’s flown over from LA for 10 days to polish up his mother’s rusty English and shed light on the startlingly brilliant performance she gives in his new Netflix film, La vita davanti a sé (The Life Ahead).

They are close. Sophia was unusual among her peers for not developing any masochistic tendencies – no substance abuse, no car-crash love affairs. She married only once, and for life. Her husband