\n\tWith more than 130 feature credits and a handful of theatrical roles in her name, she worked steadily from her debut in her early 20s until her death. She won three David di Donatello Awards \u2014 Italy\u2019s equivalent of the Oscar \u2014 for best actress and received an honorary Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival in 1993.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI was a movie star from a very young age. But I don\u2019t deserve any credit for that \u2014 it was a question of fate,\u201d Cardinale wrote in her 2005 autobiography,\u00a0Mes \u00e9toiles (My Stars). \u201cThere was always a lucky star watching over me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAlthough she always has been associated with Italian cinema, Cardinale was actually born in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, on April 15, 1938. She grew up speaking French, Arabic and the native Sicilian dialect of her emigrant parents, only learning Italian as an adult.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile studying at the Paul Cambon School in Tunis, Cardinale and a few classmates were cast in Frenchman Rene Vautier\u2019s short film,\u00a0Anneaux d\u2019or, which eventually screened at the 1958 Berlin Film Festival, and she made her feature debut with a small role opposite a young Omar Sharif<\/a> in Jacques Baratier\u2019s\u00a0Goha,\u00a0which made it to Cannes that year.<\/p>\n \n\tBut it was while attending the Venice festival in 1957 that Cardinale, who had been sent there after being elected the \u201cMost Beautiful Italian Girl in Tunisia,\u201d made her first big splash (wearing a bikini on the Lido helped). She received several offers from the Italian film industry and briefly attended the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, but, unhappy with the experience and desirous to become a schoolteacher, soon returned to Tunisia.<\/p>\n \n\tHer plans were derailed when, at 19, she was raped, became pregnant and decided to keep the child, giving birth to a boy she named Patrick. To ensure the child\u2019s future and avoid the scandals involved with having a baby out of wedlock, she signed with Italian producer Franco Cristaldi, who told her to pretend Patrick was her little brother.<\/p>\n \n\tCardinale remained under contract with Cristaldi for the next 18 years, marrying the producer in 1966. Under his guidance, she did much of her best work, beginning with a role opposite Vittorio Gassman and Renato Salvatori in Mario Monicelli\u2019s classic heist comedy,\u00a0Big Deal on Madonna Street\u00a0(1958).<\/p>\n \n\tIn 1960, she was cast as Marcello Mastroianni\u2019s lover in Mauro Bolognini\u2019s\u00a0Il bell\u2019Antonio. The drama took home the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival and began a long collaboration between the actress and director, who worked together four more times. That year, Cardinale also co-starred in Luchino Visconti\u2019s Milan-set epic\u00a0Rocco and His Brothers, playing opposite Salvatori, Alain Delon<\/a> and Annie Girardot.<\/p>\n \n\tThe next year, she headlined Valerio Zurlini\u2019s neorealist romance\u00a0Girl With a Suitcase, playing a poor woman from the provinces in love with an earnest boy from the upper classes. The film, which premiered in competition in Cannes, earned Cardinale international renown as well as her first di Donatello award.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe year 1963 proved to be a watershed one for Cardinale, with the actress starring in three bona fide classics:\u00a0The Leopard,\u00a08 1\/2\u00a0and Blake Edwards<\/a>\u2018\u00a0The Pink Panther, which would be her breakthrough role in Hollywood.<\/p>\n \n\tIn\u00a0The Leopard, she played Angelica Sedara, a beautiful Sicilian who falls in love with Delon\u2019s progressive aristocrat, Tancrede Falconeri, as the country is engulfed in political turmoil during the 1860s. The film won the Palme d\u2019or in Cannes and is widely considered to be Visconti\u2019s masterpiece. (It returned to the Croisette in 2010 for the premiere of its 4K restoration, with the screening attended by Cardinale and Delon.)<\/p>\n \n\tWhile shooting\u00a0The Leopard, Cardinale also starred in Fellini\u2019s autobiographical epic\u00a08 1\/2, playing Claudia, the muse of Mastrioanni\u2019s existentially challenged director, Guido. After premiering out-of-competition in Cannes, it won Academy Awards for foreign-language film and black-and-white costume design and in 2019 was ranked No. 10 on\u00a0Sight & Sound\u2018s list of the 50 greatest films of all time.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn a 2017 interview with\u00a0Le Monde, Cardinale recalled what it was like shooting back-to-back movies with Visconti and Fellini, often shuttling between the two sets:<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cVisconti was precise and meticulous, spoke to me in French and wanted me to have long brown hair,\u201d she said. \u201cFellini was chaotic and didn\u2019t have a script; he spoke Italian to me, cut my hair short and dyed it blond. Those were the two most important films of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn\u00a0The Pink Panther, Cardinale starred as the wealthy Princess Dala, whose priceless diamond becomes the target of an aristocratic jewel thief played by David Niven. Although her husky voice was dubbed for the role, Cardinale was praised for her work on the film, with Niven apparently telling her, \u201cAfter spaghetti, you\u2019re Italy\u2019s greatest invention.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tCardinale temporarily relocated to Hollywood and made several movies there, including Henry Hathaway\u2019s\u00a0Circus World\u00a0(1964), in which she played the daughter of John Wayne and Rita Hayworth; Richard Brooks\u2019 Western\u00a0The Professionals\u00a0(1966), also starring Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin and Robert Ryan; Alexander Mackendrick\u2019s surfer comedy\u00a0Don\u2019t Make Waves\u00a0(1967), starring Tony Curtis; and Joseph Sargent<\/a>\u2018s postwar thriller\u00a0The Hell With Heroes\u00a0(1968), with Rod Taylor<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tCardinale\u2019s most memorable English-language role, however, came in a film directed by a fellow Italian: Playing a former prostitute and frontier widow who fights to protect her land against a ruthless railroad company in the epic spaghetti Western\u00a0Once Upon a Time in the West\u00a0(1968), Cardinale gave a fiery performance for Leone that included a sadistic love scene with Henry Fonda.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cHis wife stood behind the camera like a vulture, which completely paralyzed me,\u201d Cardinale told\u00a0Le Monde\u00a0about shooting that sequence.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIndeed, Cardinale was rumored to be romantically linked with a number of leading men throughout her early career, including Delon, Mastroianni, Jean-Paul Belmondo<\/a> and Steve McQueen. Yet she rarely spoke about her love life in public, only claiming in a late interview that she was \u201cstupid\u201d for having rejected the advances of Marlon Brando<\/a>. \u201cI never wanted to mix my private and public lives,\u201d she said. \u201cNo flirting. No flings.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t Claudia Cardinale circa 1963.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhotofest<\/p>\n \n\tAfter divorcing Cristaldi in 1975, Cardinale began living with Neapolitan director Pasquale Squitieri, with whom she remained until his death in 2017. The two had a daughter, also named Claudia, and collaborated on features including\u00a0I guappi\u00a0(1974), Corleone (1977), Claretta (1984) and Atto di dolore\u00a0(1990).<\/p>\n \n\tCardinale worked steadily from the 1970s onward, nabbing another di Donatello prize for Luigi Zampa\u2019s comedy\u00a0A Girl in Australia\u00a0(1971) and Italian Golden Globes for her leading roles in\u00a0Claretta\u00a0and\u00a0Atto di dolore.<\/p>\n \n\tHighlights of the second half of her career included Marco Ferreri\u2019s satirical Vatican-set drama, L\u2019udienza\u00a0(1972); Visconti\u2019s English-language drama\u00a0Conversation Piece\u00a0(1974), in which she reteamed with the director and Lancaster; Werner Herzog\u2019s\u00a0Fitzcarraldo\u00a0(1982), in which she played a mistress brought into the jungle by her lover (Klaus Kinski in the title role); and Marco Bellocchio\u2019s\u00a0Henry IV\u00a0(1984) as she teamed again with Mastroianni.<\/p>\n \n\tAlongside her prolific work onscreen, Cardinale starred in stage productions of plays by Luigi Pirandello (How You Love Me), Tennessee Williams (Sweet Bird of Youth,\u00a0The Glass Menagerie) and Neil Simon<\/a> (The Odd Couple), with Squitieri often directing.<\/p>\n \n\tShe also had a brief career as a disco singer in the 1970s, releasing such tracks as \u201cLove Affair\u201d and \u201cSun \u2026 I Love You,\u201d which were minor hits in Europe and Japan.<\/p>\n \n\tCardinale appeared on the inside foldout of early releases of Bob Dylan\u2019s legendary 1966\u00a0Blonde on Blonde\u00a0album (he was an admirer) and caused a stir when she wore a miniskirt to a meeting with the pope in 1967.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-hollywoodreporter-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
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