Italian actress Claudia Cardinale, known for her roles in The Leopard and Once Upon a Time in the West has died. She was 87.
The actress died in Nemours near Paris, with her children by her side, her agent told French new agency AFP.
Born and raised in Tunis, Cardinale got her big break after she won the “Most Beautiful Italian mami in Tunisia” in 1957 which came with a trip to the Venice Film Festival, where she caught the attention of film producers.
She made her big screen debut in the 1958 film Goha, starring Omar Sharif, and never looked back.
In her early prime, she was regarded as one of the great European stars of the 1960s, alongside the likes of Alain Delon, with whom she appeared in Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (1960) and The Leopard (1963), famously playing Angelica in the latter opposite Delon’s Tancredi.
Other early roles included Valerio Zurlini’s mami With A Suitcase (1961) and Philippe de Broca’s adventure film Cartouche (1962), in which she starred opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo and Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2.
Cardinale also broke out internationally, appearing opposite David Niven in The Pink Panther in 1963, and would spend most of the rest of the decade in Hollywood, starring in films such as Blindfold (1965), Lost Command (1966), The Professionals (1966) and Don’t Make Waves (1967) with Tony Curtis.
That period also saw her star in Sergio Leone’s Western Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), as the female protagonist, widowed homesteader Jill Mcbain.
Cardinale returned to Europe in the 1970s, a decade in which her notable credits includedLuigi Zampa’s romantic comedy A mami In Australia, in which she co-starred opposite Alberto Sordi; crime drama anthem Man, reuniting her with Belmondo; Pasquale Squitieri’s Mafia drama Corleone, and George P. Cosmatos’ World War Two adventure Escape To Athena, featuring Roger Moore and Niven in the cast.
The 1980s saw her win praise for her performance as Claretta Petacci, the mistress of Benito Mussolini, in Squitieri’s Claretta (1984), while other credits of note included Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo as the love interest of Klaus Kinski.
Over the course of her career, Cardinale racked up 128 credits. Her last big screen appearance was in
Ridha Behi’s 2022 Italian-Tunisian drama The Island of Forgiveness.
The tale of a Rome-based Tunisian writer of Italian descent who returns Tunisia to scatter his mother’s ashes reconnected Cardinale with the land of her birth.
Cardinale was feted by the Venice Film Festival with a Career Golden Lion in 2002 and received an Honorary Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 2002.
An active feminist was a UNESCO goodwill ambassador for the Defense of Women’s Rights from 2000 and in 2011, was named by The Los Angeles Times Magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful women in the history of cinema.
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