Claudia Cardinale, icon of Italian and international cinema, dies at 87

Claudia Cardinale, one of the most beloved and influential figures in Italian and European cinema, has died at 87 in Nemours, France. The news was confirmed to AFP by her agent Laurent Savry. With her passing, world cinema loses a luminous star, admired for her beauty, talent and independence across six decades of work.

From Tunisian roots to Venice discovery

Born in Tunis in 1938 to Sicilian parents, Cardinale never aspired to become an actress. Her destiny changed in 1957, when she won the contest “The Most Beautiful Italian Girl in Tunisia” and was invited to the Venice Film Festival. Soon after, producer Franco Cristaldi signed her, launching a career that quickly reached international acclaim.

Her early roles included Mario Monicelli’s Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), Pietro Germi’s The Facts of Murder (1959), Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (1960), and Valerio Zurlini’s Girl with a Suitcase (1961), one of her most poignant performances.

The 1960s: Fellini, Visconti, Leone

The 1960s were her golden decade. In 1963, Cardinale shot Federico Fellini’s 8½, playing Marcello Mastroianni’s muse, and Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard, opposite Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon.

As she later wrote in her autobiography Mes Étoiles: “Visconti taught me to cultivate mystery, without which there can be no true beauty.”

She won the Silver Ribbon for Bebo’s Girl (1964) by Luigi Comencini and starred in Mauro Bolognini’s Senilità (1962). But it was Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) that immortalized her as Jill McBain, a woman who stands strong in a male-dominated universe.

Hollywood and beyond

Cardinale also made her mark in Hollywood with Blake Edwards’s The Pink Panther (1963), and worked alongside Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, and David Niven.

In the 1970s she starred in Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth (1977), Alberto Sordi’s comedy A Girl in Australia (1971), and Damiano Damiani’s mafia drama The Day of the Owl (1968). In France, she shared the screen with Brigitte Bardot in Christian-Jaque’s Les Pétroleuses (1971).

Her career revived in the 1980s with Werner Herzog ’s Fitzcarraldo (1982), followed by collaborations with Marco Bellocchio, Liliana Cavani, and her partner Pasquale Squitieri, who directed her in Claretta (1984).

A free spirit on and off screen

Cardinale was more than an actress: she was a woman of resilience and independence. “I was never a submissive woman. I always chose for myself, even when it didn’t seem so,” she once declared.

Since 2000 she had been a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, dedicated to women’s rights and cultural promotion. For her, cinema was not just art, but also a tool for freedom.

A timeless legacy

In 2002 she received the Berlinale’s Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement, and in 2023 MoMA in New York honored her with a 23-film retrospective. Reflecting on her career, she said: “I’ve lived more than 150 lives – prostitute, saint, romantic, every kind of woman – and that is marvellous.”

With her passing, the world loses one of its greatest stars. But Claudia Cardinale’s husky voice, proud gaze, and unforgettable performances will keep shining on screen, forever Italy’s “dream girl.”