By Bob Price

Swedish bombshell actress and model Anita Ekberg, famed for her role in legendary director Federico Fellini’s 1960 groundbreaking film La Dolce Vita, died on Sunday morning at her home in Italy, after a lingering illness. She was 83.

She was born Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg in 1931 in Sweden. She won the Miss Sweden beauty pageant at age 20, and went on to the Miss Universe pageant, which she didn’t win. But she was offered a movie contract, and would go on to appear in 50 movies during her very successful career. Her final film was Bambola in 1996, and among her first was Abbott and Costello Go to Mars in 1953.

She appeared opposite such leading men as John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and Henry Fonda, among many others. In her personal life she was romantically linked at one time or another to Sinatra, Yul Brynner, Gary Cooper, and Tyrone Power. She married and widowed twice, both times to relatively unknown actors Anthony Steele and Clyde Rogers.

She was awarded a Golden Globe in 1956 as a promising new actress.