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February 3, 1999
Web posted at: 9:54 p.m. EST (0254 GMT)

From Correspondent Bill Tush

NEW YORK (CNN) -- There's no disputing that Oscar-winner Sophia Loren is a screen legend. But she is also talented behind the stove.

"I cook whenever I have some friends coming over," she says. "I like to cook for them. I think that cooking is an act of love, an act of friendship, and I always try to find a new way of making a recipe."

Of course, there is having friends over to dinner and then there's Sophia Loren's take on having friends over to dinner -- people like Clark Gable.

"He liked pasta very much and a nice glass of wine, red wine," she says.

Loren has published a new cookbook, "Sophia Loren's Recipes and Memories," that contains many of the dishes she has whipped up for famous friends over the years.

She says her love of food comes from her family roots in Italy. Loren remembers her grandmother cooking during World War II as bombs fell, singing behind her pots and pans.

"She made it like a joke. She made it sound like it was really nothing and tomorrow it was going to pass," Loren says.