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Bitter Lollobrigida blames press for split-up
2006-12-07
Gina Lollobrigida vowed on Thursday to make the media pay for ruining her plans to marry Javier Rigau, a Spaniard 34 years her junior. In an interview with Reuters after she arrived in Rome from Philadelphia, the 79-year-old film star said the couple had called off their wedding plans after Rigau was worn down by "endless attacks, slander and violence" from the media. "It's a disgrace, it can't be allowed to go on," said Lollobrigida, who became a byword for sex appeal in 1950s Italian classics like "The World's Most Beautiful Woman." "We have decided to cancel our wedding but we will still see each other, we are friends and we respect each other." The couple met at a party in Monte Carlo in 1984 and announced in October they would marry in January in Rome. Lollobrigida, who ran unsuccessfully for the European Parliament in 1999, said she was lobbying to have international law changed to increase a citizen's protection from sensationalist press and television. Many of the attacks on Rigau, a 45-year-old entrepreneur, were launched by Madrid television stations and amplified around the world via the internet, she said. "I have decided to try to get the law changed, I am only a little person but I have a great desire to succeed." She said Rigau was "in total crisis" after being presented as an opportunist and enduring a string of false allegations and character assassination. "If these people know they will be taken off the air and they will have to pay massive fines then I'm sure this vileness will stop," said Lollobrigida, who left Yugoslav emigre Milko Skofic in 1971 after 22 years of marriage. "In a way I feel responsible that he (Rigau) has suffered all this because he is linked to me - I am more used to having falsehoods written about me. "The press has written that I have had relations with Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger and Fidel Castro."
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