Claudia Cardinale, the luminous leading lady of Italian cinema in the 1960s, a star whose captivating beauty enchanted directors like Luchino Visconti, Sergio Leone, and Federico Fellini, has passed away in Nemours, France, at the age of 87. She was widely adored as Italy’s “dream girl.”
Her agent, Laurent Savry, confirmed her passing on Tuesday, though the cause of death was not disclosed. Ms. Cardinale had made her home in Nemours, just south of Paris, for several years.
Ms. Cardinale’s illustrious career spanned six decades and over 150 European films. She also made her mark in Hollywood, notably in Blake Edwards’s beloved comedy, “The Pink Panther.”
Her roles were diverse and iconic: she embodied Marcello Mastroianni’s feminine ideal in Fellini’s “8½,” played a brothel owner funding an eccentric opera house project in Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo,” and portrayed a formidable widow gunslinger in Sergio Leone’s epic “Once Upon a Time in the West.”
Claudia Cardinale with legendary director Federico Fellini on the set of his masterpiece “8½” in 1963, a period when she rapidly starred in several significant films.
Claudia Cardinale alongside director Sergio Leone during the production of his classic 1968 spaghetti western, “Once Upon a Time in the West.”
Often alongside contemporaries like Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida, Ms. Cardinale was hailed as one of Italy’s prominent sex symbols of the 1960s and ’70s. However, as Italian film critic Massimo Benvegnù noted, she possessed a distinctly more approachable screen persona.
Benvegnù elaborated, “Stars of that era, such as Anita Ekberg, Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot, and Jayne Mansfield – the ‘maggiorate’ – were known for their very curvaceous figures. Cardinale, in contrast, was less about overt curves and more about a genuine, ‘girl-next-door’ authenticity. She felt more real.”
Despite her eventual stardom, acting wasn’t her initial dream as a teenager. Interestingly, she even faced challenges speaking Italian for a portion of her career, having been raised primarily speaking French.
Born Claude Joséphine Rose Cardinale on April 15, 1938, in the French protectorate of Tunisia, her parents, Francesco Cardinale and Yolanda Greco, were immigrants from Sicily.
She was the eldest of four children, growing up in a close-knit Sicilian community within Tunis, the capital city. Her father worked as a technical engineer for the Tunisian railway, while her mother managed their household.
At 18, Claude entered a beauty pageant, partially arranged by her mother at the Italian Embassy in Tunisia, where she earned the title of “most beautiful Italian girl in Tunisia.” The prize was a trip to the Venice Film Festival, a whirlwind event where she found herself constantly photographed by the Italian press – largely due, she later quipped, to her bikini. Despite having acted in a few films already, she maintained to reporters that acting wasn’t her true ambition.
Claudia Cardinale photographed in Italy during the 1950s. An Italian critic once observed that “in many films, she transcends into an icon, a blend of reality and the ethereal.”
“Subsequently, she graced the covers of every Italian magazine, often under headlines proclaiming her as ‘the girl who doesn’t want to make movies’,” recalled Mr. Benvegnù.
Claude returned to her parents’ home in Tunisia, declining further acting proposals. During her teenage years, she endured a sexual assault by an adult acquaintance, which forced her into an abusive relationship and resulted in a pregnancy, as shared by her daughter, Claudia Squitieri. In 1957, her son Patrick was born in London. To shield him from societal judgment, her parents raised Patrick as her younger brother, a truth he wouldn’t learn until he was eight.
Later that year, renowned Italian producer Franco Cristaldi signed her to his studio, Vides Cinematografica (now Cristaldifilm), marking the beginning of Claude’s professional career as Claudia Cardinale.
Her breakthrough came with the 1958 comedic crime film “Big Deal on Madonna Street,” directed by Mario Monicelli. This led to a rapid succession of starring roles, including two cinematic milestones in 1963: Federico Fellini’s Oscar-winning “8½” and Luchino Visconti’s “The Leopard.”
Claudia Cardinale alongside Renato Salvatori in “Big Deal on Madonna Street” (1958), the Mario Monicelli-directed film that served as her breakthrough performance.
Claudia Cardinale sharing the screen with Alain Delon in “The Leopard” (1963). She credited the film’s director, Luchino Visconti, with teaching her “how to be beautiful.”
“From then on, she was affectionately known as ‘Italy’s girlfriend,’ the woman of everyone’s dreams,” Mr. Benvegnù recounted.
In 1964, Ms. Cardinale delivered a commercially and critically acclaimed performance in Luigi Comencini’s “La Ragazza di Bube” (“Bebo’s Girl”), for which she received Italy’s esteemed Nastro d’Argento award for best actress – her first major acting accolade. In the film, she portrayed Mara, a Tuscan peasant girl whose post-World War II romance with a young partisan (George Chakiris) is complicated when he is forced into hiding after being implicated in a double homicide.
Though she married Mr. Cristaldi in Las Vegas in 1966, Ms. Squitieri stated that her mother never considered the union truly “official,” despite Cristaldi providing his surname to her son.
In Fellini’s cinematic world, specifically “8½,” set in a lavish spa, Ms. Cardinale portrayed Claudia, an actress and muse to the protagonist, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni). For Anselmi, she represented his ultimate feminine ideal, the ingenue he envisioned for his planned science fiction film.
Claudia Cardinale in a scene from “8½.” Her character served as an actress and muse, seen by the film’s protagonist (Marcello Mastroianni) as the embodiment of his ideal woman.
“You are one of the girls who distributes the healing waters,” he famously tells her upon her arrival at the spa, preparing for her role. He described her as “beautiful, both young and ancient, a child yet already a woman, authentic and radiant. There’s no doubt that she’s his salvation.”
This portrayal perfectly encapsulated how audiences came to perceive Ms. Cardinale, according to Vito Zigarrio, a film critic, historian at the University of Rome, and Venice Film Festival organizer. “In many films, she transforms into an icon, blurring the lines between reality and unreality,” he stated, adding that “this ambiguity between fantasy and reality imbues her characters with remarkable intensity.”
In Luchino Visconti’s expansive period drama “The Leopard,” she captivated audiences as a young Sicilian debutante who wins the affections of both a soldier (Alain Delon) and his aristocratic uncle (Burt Lancaster). In her 2005 autobiography, “Mes étoiles” (“My Stars”), co-authored with Danièle Georget, she famously wrote: “You can learn beauty. Visconti taught me how to be beautiful. He taught me to cultivate mystery, without which, he said, there cannot be real beauty.”
Her first venture with an American director, Blake Edwards, came in 1964, where she embraced a comedic role as a princess searching for a lost jewel in “The Pink Panther.” This classic comedy also featured Peter Sellers, David Niven, and Robert Wagner.
Claudia Cardinale alongside David Niven in Blake Edwards’s “The Pink Panther” (1964), a comedic gem that also featured Peter Sellers and Robert Wagner. This marked her first collaboration with an American director.
Another pivotal role arrived in Sergio Leone’s 1968 spaghetti western, “Once Upon a Time in the West.” Here, she portrayed a resilient New Orleans prostitute who journeys to the American Southwest, only to discover her intended husband brutally murdered by bandits upon her arrival.
As the lone female lead amidst a formidable cast of male antiheroes, including Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda, Ms. Cardinale “commanded the screen, demonstrating an ability to hold her own with these powerful actors while conveying a deeply palpable sense of interiority,” commented Rome-based American film critic Jay Weissberg.
Her portrayal of rugged independence in that film became a defining characteristic of her career, according to Antonio Monda, artistic director of the Rome Film Festival. “She exuded a sense of freedom, a strong personality that simply couldn’t be tamed,” he observed. “She was fiercely independent.”
Claudia Cardinale pictured in 1969 with her then-husband, Italian screenwriter and producer Franco Cristaldi. Their marriage concluded around 1975.
Around 1975, Ms. Cardinale sought a divorce from Mr. Cristaldi, choosing instead to live with director Pasquale Squitieri, an independent and often provocative filmmaker known for his right-leaning views. “She wanted to emancipate herself,” stated Mr. Monda, “She didn’t want to be perceived merely as the creation of a powerful producer.”
In subsequent interviews, Ms. Cardinale candidly described her relationship with Mr. Cristaldi as one of absolute control. He micromanaged almost every detail of her life, she revealed, and retained the majority of her earnings from American film projects. “I was merely an employee, much like an office worker,” she recounted to Variety.
Their relationship eventually frayed, and her subsequent affair with Mr. Squitieri resulted in what Ms. Cardinale referred to as their effective blacklisting from the Italian film industry. To revive her career, she relocated to France, accepting various supporting roles.
Ms. Cardinale collaborated on nearly a dozen of Mr. Squitieri’s films. They welcomed a daughter in 1979 and remained together for four decades until his passing in 2017.
“It was an unconventional relationship,” observed Ms. Squitieri about her parents, who cohabited until 1989 and maintained a remarkably close bond thereafter.
Claudia Cardinale with Italian director Pasquale Squitieri in 1978. They became parents to a daughter in 1979 and shared 40 years together until his death in 2017. She starred in almost a dozen of his cinematic works.
Her work also extended to television, where she was part of the star-studded 1977 mini-series “Jesus of Nazareth,” portraying an adulteress facing the threat of stoning.
Early in her career, Ms. Cardinale admired and even modeled herself after French icon Brigitte Bardot, with whom she co-starred in Christian-Jaque’s 1971 French western comedy, “Les Pétroleuses” (“The Legend of Frenchie King”). This parody of Hollywood tropes featured all-female shootouts and a memorable, spirited fistfight between the two leading ladies.
“Bardot was truly her idol,” Ms. Squitieri shared. “Despite expectations of a fierce rivalry, they actually forged a very strong friendship.”
In Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo” (1982), Ms. Cardinale, in a supporting yet pivotal role opposite Klaus Kinski, portrayed a brothel madame whose unwavering belief in her lover’s audacious dream – to build an opera house in the Amazon – fuels his extraordinary endeavor of dragging a steamship over a mountain.
Klaus Kinski and Claudia Cardinale on location in Peru during the filming of “Fitzcarraldo” (1981), with director Werner Herzog visible in the foreground.
In a review for The Times, Vincent Canby lauded her performance, writing: “While Miss Cardinale’s screen time is perhaps shorter than desired, she illuminates her role and, in turn, Mr. Kinski, helping to transform him into a genuinely charming screen presence.”
“Fitzcarraldo” earned the prestigious top award at the Cannes Film Festival and brought Ms. Cardinale a wave of new admirers, solidifying her presence on the radar of film producers and casting directors for many years.
In her later years, Ms. Cardinale resided with her son and daughter in Nemours. There, she founded a namesake foundation dedicated to supporting arts focused on women and the environment. In 2000, UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization, appointed her a goodwill ambassador, acknowledging her dedication to advancing the status of women and girls through education and advocating for their rights.
Claudia Cardinale and her daughter, Claudia Squitieri, attending the opening ceremony of the 2004 Marrakech Film Festival, where Ms. Cardinale was celebrated.
Detailed information regarding her surviving family members was not immediately disclosed.
In 2023, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in collaboration with Cinecittà, Italy’s national film company, presented a comprehensive 23-film retrospective celebrating Ms. Cardinale’s remarkable career.
Though she transitioned from leading roles in her later years, Ms. Cardinale maintained a consistent acting presence across various countries, especially in France, her cherished adopted home.
“My mother was incredibly adaptive,” noted Ms. Squitieri. “She was never a demanding diva, full of extravagant whims or capricious simply because she was a star. Instead, she remained profoundly humble in her wishes. She consistently made time to sign autographs, disliked the concept of bodyguards, and always strived to connect with people. She truly felt blessed by her journey.”