It's shocking how Sophia Loren has let herself go—her hair a stringy gray mess, her shoulders slumped forward, her wardrobe a mishmash of loose-fitting knits. Call it a mother's obligation. Loren plays an aging grocery clerk with a talent for art in her 100th film, Between Strangers, airing Oct. 5 on WE: Women's Entertainment and directed by her son Edoardo Ponti in his full-length directorial debut. "I had to remind her sometimes, 'Mom, don't stand straight—slouch,'" says Ponti, 30, who also wrote the script. "We had to fight against the glamor of Sophia Loren."

Offscreen, of course, the Italian bombshell is ever perfectly coiffed and made-up. Still, Loren, 69, claims to be a regular mamma: "My focus in life was always toward my children"—Edoardo and Carlo Jr., 34, an orchestra conductor, her sons with her husband, director Carlo Ponti, 89, with whom Loren has shared her life for more than 45 years. She's so enamored of her boys that she claims not to recall any of their youthful misbehavior.

"I went to boarding school from 13 to 18," Edoardo says slyly, "so she wouldn't know."

"But I was there every Sunday," Loren quickly points out.

"She was the only parent who would call every night," reports Edoardo, rolling his eyes. "Always during dinner."

Not that a nosy mom stopped Ponti from moving back in with the folks at their homes in L.A. and Geneva. "Like a good Italian son," he says, "I will move out when I get married."

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