Sophia Loren Says She ‘Pulverized’ Marlon Brando With Her Eyes After He Touched Her Without Consent
Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando were both A-list actors of their time, so it’s not surprising that they co-starred in a movie together. But people may not have realized how little Loren thought of Brando. Years later, she shared an incident that happened between the two of them and her fierce reaction to him.
A romantic movie, but no love lost between the stars
IMDb reports that in 1967, Loren and Brando starred together in A Countess from Hong Kong. It was about Ogden Mears, a wealthy man going through a divorce. He’s got his hopes set on becoming a South Arabian ambassador when he encounters Countess Natascha in a nightclub.
The two end up spending the night together, but the next day, Ogden is surprised by Natascha. When he boards a cruise ship for home, he discovers that Natascha has stowed away and hidden in his room. She has no immigration documents, but she’s desperate to go to the US.
To help her, Ogden starts to plot a fake marriage between her and his valet. But problems arise when he starts to fall in love with her himself.
The stars of the movie were already Hollywood legends, and the romance between their characters was a key element of the story. But behind the scenes, their relationship was distinctly frosty.
‘Don’t you ever dare to do that again’
Loren wrote an autobiography called Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. One of the stories she included in the book was about a run-in she had on the set of A Countess from Hong Kong.
“All of a sudden, he put his hands on me,” she said, according to The Guardian. “I turned in all tranquillity and blew his face, like a cat stroked the wrong way and said, ‘Don’t you ever dare to do that again. Never again!'” Her response seemed to have the desired effect, and she made certain to let him know how out of line he was.
“As I pulverized him, with my eyes, he seemed small, defenseless, almost a victim of his own notoriety. He never did it again, but it was very difficult working with him after that.”
Loren’s issues with Brandon weren’t the only problem he ran into on the set. He also had a run-in with the director.
He upset the director too
A Countess from Hong Kong didn’t only have two A-list actors. The movie also boasted a director who was famous already: Charlie Chaplin. But the two men didn’t seem to get along very well.
According to Variety, Loren said Brando often showed up late for filming. One day, he kept them waiting so long for a scene that when he finally arrived, Chaplin had a few things to say to him. It seemed to Loren that the lecture made Brando feel a little less like the big star.
“Marlon Brando didn’t have a very good voice, very small,” she said. After Chaplin set him straight, “it went away.” Brandon clearly had a profound effect on people during the filming of A Countess from Hong Kong, but not a positive one.
Some people just leave a strong impression, and he seems to have had an enduringly negative one on Loren. Although there was little protection at the time for women who are sexually assaulted, she seemed to be able to get him to back off. Brandon didn’t make many friends while he was making the movie, but hopefully, he learned a lesson or two about respect.
