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"Nothing is too small to demand her attention if it has something to do with her career," says Anatole Litvak, who has just finished directing her in Five Miles to Midnight in Paris. For example, she keeps a magnifying glass beside her bed, where she goes over the tiny contact prints of her publicity pictures. "In all the weeks in Paris, she only went out twice," says Litvak. "One can't even get her to a nightclub unless she convinces herself it is a question of public attention. Actually, once she's there she has a great time, but she'll never let herself have fun for fun's sake. A good actress needs human experiences of all kinds and must live broadly in order to feel. I kept telling her, 'Sophia, go out and live a little,' but there's nothing doing. Even her rare vacations are a big bore, concentrated on physical recuperation, which is also part of the plan." Similarly, when she went to England to make The Key, she took a flat in suburban Elstree and did not go into London once during the four months of shooting. Yet that sort of spartanism paid off in a performance—under the brilliant direction of Sir Carol Reed—which delivered astonishing proof that her talents were more than physical. She had little to do, but she did it to perfection, as the somber mistress of a series of doomed World War II tugboat skippers, managing to suggest the awesome fears just beneath the surface of the dearly bought frivolities of war.
"What struck me was something terribly important to a director," says Carol Reed.
"She trusts you right from the start. She gives herself to you as an artist. During shooting she would ask me, 'What did I do wrong and what can I do to make it better?' I never knew her to pull an act—the headache, the temperament. Usually with such beauty, there is worry about how looks are. She doesn't bother about looks. She's interested in acting." Natural Light. Sophia's depth as an actress has been the discovery of good directors, and none knows her better than Vittorio De Sica, who understands and intensifies the natural light that shines from her. "In spite of having the usual womanly defects," says De Sica chivalrously, "she is the only really spiritually honest woman I have ever known." From Gold of Naples to Two Women and her episode in Boccaccio '70, he has directed her in many films. Under poor direction, most of them could have proved merely tawdry — mere smirking, leering, petty triumphs of voyeurism, like American cheesecake. Sex to the European eye is more interesting and less adolescent. De Sica has used Sophia's body and her spirit in honest and artful balance.
"Sophia is a typical result of today's Italian cinema,'' says De Sica. "She rep resents the artistic expression that we look for, the lack of speculation based on effects. The American cinema, with all its mechanism, is no more than an industry.