Legendary actress Claudia Cardinale dies at 87.
The Tunisian-born actress died in Paris.
ROME (Reuters) Claudia Cardinale, a glamorous icon of postwar Italian cinema who enjoyed a long and varied career as an actress in film and theatre, has died at the age of 87, according to AFP and other French news outlets.
Raised in Tunisia in a family of Sicilian origin, Cardinale was introduced to the world of cinema in 1957, after winning a beauty contest in Tunis and being rewarded with a trip to the Venice Film Festival.
Her voice had to be dubbed for her early roles on the Italian screen because she grew up in a family where the Sicilian dialect was spoken and was educated at a French-language school.
The start of her career was also complicated by a secret pregnancy which, according to her, was the result of an abusive relationship. She gave birth to a son, Patrick, in London in 1958, and passed him off as a younger brother for several years while he was raised by her parents.
After a series of minor roles, she achieved international fame in 1963 when she appeared in Federico Fellini's film "8½", and also starred alongside Burt Lancaster in "The Leopard" that same year.
Filming two movies at the same time brought complications, with Cardinale recalling that she had to use different hair colors for the two roles.
In a 2013 interview with the British newspaper The Guardian, Cardinale compared the approaches of directors Fellini and Luchino Visconti, who directed "The Leopard".
"He (Fellini) couldn't film without noise. With Visconti, it was the opposite, like doing theater. We couldn't say a word. Very serious," she said.
Her rising profile opened doors to Hollywood productions, and she appeared in the comedy "The Pink Panther," directed by Blake Edwards, and in Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West," in 1968.
OSTRACISM
Cardinale's career suffered a setback in the 1970s after she separated from film producer Franco Cristaldi to begin a long-term relationship with filmmaker Pasquale Squitieri, with whom she had a daughter, also named Claudia.
Annoyed at being replaced by another man, Cristaldi asked friends and associates in the Italian film industry to ostracize Cardinale, which resulted, for example, in Visconti's refusal to direct his last film, "The Innocent" (1976).
"It was a very delicate moment. I discovered that I had no money in my bank account," Cardinale said about that period.
Franco Zeffirelli eventually helped her by casting her in the 1977 television miniseries "Jesus of Nazareth." She then went on to work with other European directors, including Werner Herzog and Marco Bellocchio.
Cardinale, with her hoarse voice and chain smoking habit, had a reputation for being a fiercely independent and free-spirited woman who once defied Vatican protocol by attending a meeting with Pope Paul VI in a miniskirt.
A 2022 book celebrating her life was called "Claudia Cardinale. The Indomitable".
Having lived much of her life in France and being a friend of Presidents François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, Cardinale turned to the theatre at the turn of the century, receiving praise for her stage appearances.
She continued making films in various European languages until the end of her life, appearing in the Swiss TV series Bulle in 2020.
Awarded a lifetime achievement award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2002, she said that acting was a great career.
"I've lived more than 150 lives—prostitute, saint, romantic, every type of woman—and it's wonderful to have this opportunity to change yourself," she said.
"I worked with the most important directors. They gave me everything."
(By Keith Weir and Alvise Armellini)
