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Anita Ekberg dies, Anita Ekberg, who became an international symbol of lush beauty and unbridled sensuality in the 1960 Federico Fellini film “La Dolce Vita,” died on Sunday in Rocca di Papa, southeast of Rome. She was 83.

The cause was complications of a long illness, her lawyer, Patrizia Ubaldi, said.

Ms. Ekberg had kept a low public profile in recent years. She did make an appearance in 2010 at a film festival in Rome, where a new restoration of “La Dolce Vita” was having its world premiere. In December 2011 it was reported that she was almost penniless, had no family to help her and was seeking financial assistance from the Fellini Foundation while living at a nursing home in Italy, her adopted country.

Fellini cast Ms. Ekberg in “La Dolce Vita” as a hedonistic American actress visiting Rome. A single moonlit scene — in which she wades into the Trevi Fountain in a strapless evening gown, turns her face ecstatically to the fountain’s waterfall and seductively calls Marcello Mastroianni’s character, a jaded journalist, to join her — established her place in cinema history.

Ms. Ekberg won a Golden Globe, sharing the 1956 award for most promising newcomer with Dana Wynter and Victoria Shaw, but most of her roles focused on her face and figure. When she traveled overseas to entertain American troops in the 1950s, it was as a sex symbol. Bob Hope introduced her as “the greatest thing to come from Sweden since smorgasbord” and joked that her parents had won the Nobel Prize for architecture.

Decades later, she told Entertainment Weekly: “When you’re born beautiful, it helps you start in the business. But then it becomes a handicap.”

Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg was born on Sept. 29, 1931, in Malmo, Sweden, one of eight children of a harbor master.

She did some modeling as a teenager and was later named Miss Sweden, traveling to the United States as a special guest at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. She did not take home the Miss Universe title but did win an American modeling contract and was soon acting as well.

Ms. Ekberg’s first credited film role was in “Abbott and Costello Go to Mars” (1953), in which she played a voluptuous guard on the planet Venus. During the next decade or so she was kept busy in Hollywood movies, including “Blood Alley” (1955), a drama with John Wayne, in which she played a Chinese woman; “4 for Texas” (1963), a western with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin; “Call Me Bwana” (1963), a comedy with Hope; and two comedies with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, “Artists and Models” (1955) and “Hollywood or Bust” (1956).

She also made a cameo appearance in the travel comedy “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium” (1969) and, on the more serious side, had a supporting role as the alluring, social-climbing wife of Henry Fonda’s character in King Vidor’s epic production of “War and Peace” (1956). But it was “La Dolce Vita” that made her famous.

She worked for Fellini again, as a billboard photograph that comes to life in the segment of “Boccaccio 70” (1962) that he directed, and as herself in “The Clowns” (1970) and “Intervista” (1987). Over a five-decade acting career, she made more than 50 feature films. Her last screen appearance was in a 2002 episode of the Italian television series “Il Bello Delle Donne.”

Romantically linked with Hollywood actors including Sinatra, Gary Cooper, Tyrone Power, Rod Taylor, Yul Brynner and Errol Flynn, she married and divorced twice. Her husbands were Anthony Steel, a British matinee idol (1956 to 1959), and Rik Van Nutter, an American actor who also appeared in films under the name Clyde Rogers (1963 to 1975). Mr. Steel died in 2001, Mr. Van Nutter in 2005. She had no children.

Ms. Ekberg was often outspoken in interviews, naming famous people she couldn’t bear. And she was frequently quoted as saying that it was Fellini who owed his success to her, not the other way around.

“They would like to keep up the story that Fellini made me famous, Fellini discovered me,” she said in a 1999 interview with The New York Times. “So many have said they discovered me.”

But she did appear reflective at times. “If you want la dolce vita, it is how you look at life,” she told The New York Observer the same year, while in the United States to publicize “The Red Dwarf,” a European film in which she played an aging opera star. “When I go back to Rome, my roses will be in bloom again.”

During an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere Delle Sera on the occasion of her 80th birthday, she was asked if she was lonely. She said yes, a bit. “But I have no regrets,” she added. “I have loved, cried, been mad with happiness. I have won and I have lost.”

Anita Ekberg dies, Anita Ekberg, the Swedish-born actress and sex-symbol of the 1950s and '60s who was immortalized bathing in the Trevi fountain in "La Dolce Vita," has died. She was 83.

Ekberg's lawyer Patrizia Ubaldi confirmed she died in Rome Sunday morning following a series of illnesses. She had been hospitalized most recently after Christmas.

Ubaldi said that in her last days Ekberg was saddened by the illness and her advancing age.

"She had hoped to get better, something that didn't happen," she said.

Ekberg had long lived in Italy, the country that gave her worldwide fame thanks to the iconic dip opposite Marcello Mastroianni. The scene where the blond bombshell, clad in a black dress, her arms wide open, calls out "Marcello" remains one of the most famous images in film history.

Her curvaceous body and glamorous social life made her a favorite of tabloid press in the 1950s and 1960s. She married twice but never had children ? a fact she came to regret later in her life. Some gossip magazines called her "The Iceberg" in a nod to her Scandinavian background.

But even as she became one of Sweden's most famous exports, Ekberg maintained a problematic relation with her native country. She never starred in a Swedish film and was often at odds with Swedish journalists, who criticized her for leaving the country and ridiculed her for adopting an American accent.

Born on Sept. 29, 1931, in the southern city of Malmo, Ekberg grew up with seven siblings.

In 1951 she won the Miss Sweden competition, after being recommended to enter by organizers who saw her on the street, and went to the United States to compete for the Miss Universe title.

She didn't win but became a model in Hollywood and later started taking on small acting roles.

Her role in Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" ? where she played a movie star ? shot her to stardom. The movie was a colossal success and came to define the wild and carefree days of the early 1960s.

Hosting a Swedish radio program in 2005, Ekberg recalled shooting the scene in the Trevi Fountain in Rome. She said it was shot in February, the water in the fountain was cold and Mastroianni was falling over in the fountain drunk on vodka.

"And there I was. I was freezing," she said. "They had to lift me out of the water because I couldn't feel my legs anymore."

"I have seen that scene a few times. Maybe too many times. I can't stand watching it anymore, but it was beautiful at the time," she said.

Ekberg remained in Italy for years, appearing in scores of movies, many forgettable. She returned in two Fellini movies: "Clowns" and "Intervista."

Ekberg married Briton Anthony Steel in 1956, but divorced him four years later. In 1963 she married again to actor Rik van Nutter, but that marriage also failed.

In an interview with Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet in 2006, Ekberg said her only regret in life was never having children.

"I would have liked to have a child, preferably a son," she was quoted as saying. "It didn't turn out that way. That's life, you just have to accept it."

In the interview, published in connection with Ekberg's 75th birthday, she also said she wasn't afraid of death.

"I'm just angry because I won't get the chance to tell others about death, where the soul goes and if there is a life afterward," she was quoted as saying.

"I don't know if paradise or hell exist, but I'm sure hell is more groovy."

Ubaldi said a ceremony would be held in the coming days at a Lutheran church in Rome, and that Ekberg had specified that her remains be cremated.