Hildegard Knef

. She has now largely retired from acting, and concentrates on photography and business ventures. Hildegard Knef was one of the most important actresses of post-war Germany. Her beauty brought her to the attention of Hollywood, making her first "American" film in 1954, following which she was cast in a series of light romantic comedies considered minor by some. She was sometimes compared to that other great German actress, Marlene Dietrich, in that they both were, or portrayed as, the liberated, self-confident woman. (They had one son, and were divorced in 1971). The incident in the latter film sparked one of the largest scandals in German filmmaking history and drew the criticism of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1949 she married a Yugoslavian physician, Milko Skofic.

Arguably, her most influential roles included that of Susanne Wallner in Wolfgang Staudte's film "Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are Among Us)" (the first film released after the Second World War in East Germany and produced by the Soviet filmmaking enterprise DEFA-Studio für Spielfilme) as well as her role as Marina in "Die Sünderin (The Sinner)" in which she performed the first nude scene in German filmmaking. She began appearing in Italian language films. She was billed in some English language films as Hildegard Neff. She was born Luigina Lollobrigida at Subiaco near Rome, and became a fashion model and beauty contestant. Hildegard Knef (December 28, 1925 - February 1, 2002) was a German actress, singer and writer. Gina Lollobridiga (born 4 July 1927) is an Italian actress.