The Italian actress Claudia Cardinale died at the age of 87, reports AFP news agency on Tuesday evening. The Cardinal born in the Tunisian capital Tunis was an icon of the Italian and global cinema of the sixties.
She could be seen in the drama films, among other things Rocco Egg Suoi Fratelli and Il Gattopardo from Luchino Visconti, 8½ from Federico Fellini and the films such as the Western to the wider public Once Upon A Time In The West from Sergio Leone and the comedy The Pink Panther from Blake Edwards.
During her career, she won three David di Donatello Awards, the most important Italian film prizes. In 1993 she also received a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for her entire oeuvre.
Also read this profile of Claudia Cardinale from 2016
From sex symbol to role model
“I have been a movie star since very young, but I don’t earn applause for that – it was fate,” she wrote in her autobiography in 2005 Knife. She was discovered after she won a miss election in her home country of Tunisia with a trip to the Venice film festival as a reward. She made her debut at the age of 20 in French film Goha With Omar Sharif as an opponent.
In her heyday, Cardinale played in a number of large Hollywood films, but she did not like all glamor and therefore could not ground well in the United States. In the second part of her career, she almost exclusively played in European films.
Women’s rights
At a later age, she was committed to women’s rights as a UNESCO Goodwill ambassador. She also warned of the “terrible grilling of certain directors and any form of professional blackmail” and advised young actresses to “never take on a role that you hurt or that you have to sell yourself.”
According to her agent “she leaves us a legacy of a free and inspired woman, both in her life and woman and in her career as an artist.” Cardinale died in the presence of her children in the just below Paris Nemours, where she lived.
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