Sophia Loren’s Family Album! See the Film Icon’s Cutest Photos With Sons Carlo Jr. and Edoardo

Sophia Loren‘s two sons, Carlo Ponti Jr. and Edoardo Ponti, followed in their mom’s famous footsteps, so it’s no surprise there are so many cute photos of the iconic actress and her children. Over the years, the Two Women star made memories with her sons during red carpet events and family vacations.

From the moment Sophia became the loving mom of her two children, everything changed. The Marriage Italian Style actress said she always knew she wanted to experience motherhood even before she and her husband, Carlo Ponti, started their family.

“By the time I reached the age of 29, my desire to have children had become an obsession,” she wrote in her 2014 memoir, Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life. “I simply loved children.”

The Italian movie star recalled how she would “befriend the child actors” on the sets of her TV shows or films because she enjoyed being looked at by them as sort of a mother figure. “[I’d] stay in touch with them long after shooting had finished,” she penned.

In December 1969, Sophia and her late spouse’s eldest child together, Carlo Jr., made his arrival. Less than four years later in January 1973, the pair — who were together for over 41 years before Carlo’s death in 2007 — welcomed their youngest son, Edoardo.

At the time she started her family with her longtime love, any “concern for [her] career evaporated,” Sophia wrote in her 1984 book, Women And Beauty. “Nothing mattered to me but my baby.”

The Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow actress would’ve “given up” her Hollywood career “if necessary,” she sweetly insisted. “If this means I am not modern, then I am not modern. I believe an infant needs to be with its mother as much as possible.”

Even though her kids are all grown up now and have created their own successful lives, it’s not often for her beloved sons to slip her mind. “When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts,” Sophia has marveled. “You are connected to your child and to all those who touch your lives. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.”

Scroll through the gallery below to see Sophia’s cutest photos with Carlo Jr. and Edoardo over the years!