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.