Gina Lollobrigida, who played "the most beautiful woman in the world" in the film of the same name, is getting remarried at 79 to a man who is more than three decades her junior.

Lollobrigida, called "La Lollo" in Italy, said she and her husband-to-be, Javier Rigau y Rafols, have known each other for 22 years.

Italian film legend Gina Lollobrigida, left, and Javier Rigau y Rafols of Barcelona arrive at the 56th Red Cross Ball at the Salles des Etoiles of the Monaco Sporting Club in this 2004 photo.
(Bruno Bebert/Associated Press)

She met the Spanish property entrepreneur, now 45, at a party in Monte Carlo.

"There is no age limit for love," she said from Rome.

"I am so happy, I want the whole world to know. Women of the world, don't worry about your wrinkles — love is the best rejuvenating cure there is."

The couple is to marry in New York before the end of the year.

It is a second marriage for Lollobrigida, who was divorced in 1971 from Yugoslavian-born doctor Milko Skofic. They had been married 22 years and had a son.

'I have always had a weakness for younger men because they are generous and have no complexes.' —Gina Lollobrigida

"I have always had a weakness for younger men because they are generous and have no complexes," she said in an interview with Spain's Hola! magazine.

Lollobrigida embodied the prototype of Italian beauty with movies such as Come September, Trapeze, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Love and Dreams and Never So Few.

She has played opposite some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Humphrey Bogart, Yul Brynner, Frank Sinatra, Sean Connery, Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis.

The daughter of a furniture-maker in Subiaco, Italy, Lollobrigida was discovered by producer Mario Costa and brought to America by the eccentric mogul Howard Hughes.

In recent years, she has returned to art, her first love, doing both sculpture and photography.