Anita Ekberg

Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg (born 29 September 1931 in Malmö, Skåne) is a Swedish model, actress and cult sex symbol. She is best known for her role as Sylvia in the 1960 Federico Fellini film, La Dolce Vita, which features the legendary scene of her cavorting in Trevi Fountain alongside Marcello Mastroianni.

By the mid-50s, other studios offered Ekberg work. Paramount Pictures and Frank Tashlin cast her in Hollywood or Bust (1956) and Artists and Models (1955) both starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Both films used her as a foil for many of the director's sight gags. Ekberg also played an Amazonian extraterrestrial in 1953's Abbott and Costello Go to Mars.

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. The tour led her to a contract with John Wayne's Batjac Productions. Wayne cast her in Blood Alley, a small role (1955), where Ekberg's features and appearance were Orientalized to play a Chinese woman, a role that earned her a Golden Globe award.

RKO gave Ekberg the female lead in Back from Eternity.

In 1956, Ekberg went to Rome to make War and Peace, directed by distinguished Hollywood veteran King Vidor and co-starring Audrey Hepburn.