Claudia Cardinale, an iconic leading lady of 1960s Italian cinema, whose captivating beauty and talent were celebrated by legendary directors like Luchino Visconti, Sergio Leone, and Federico Fellini, has passed away at the age of 87 in Nemours, France. She was widely adored as Italy’s ‘dream girl’.
Her agent, Laurent Savry, confirmed the news on Tuesday, though the cause of death remains undisclosed. Cardinale had resided in Nemours, a town south of Paris, for several years.
Known for her extensive work in European cinema, Cardinale’s six-decade career spanned over 150 films. She also made her mark in Hollywood, notably starring in Blake Edwards’s beloved comedy ‘The Pink Panther’.
Her memorable roles include embodying Marcello Mastroianni’s feminine ideal in Fellini’s ‘8½’, portraying a determined bordello owner funding a grand opera house project in Werner Herzog’s ‘Fitzcarraldo’, and a resilient widow gunslinger in Sergio Leone’s epic ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’.
Claudia Cardinale alongside Federico Fellini in 1963, during the filming of ‘8½’. This was one of many significant movies she made in rapid succession.
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Claudia Cardinale with director Sergio Leone on the set of his 1968 spaghetti western, ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’.
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Often celebrated alongside contemporaries like Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida as an Italian sex symbol of the 1960s and ’70s, Cardinale possessed a uniquely relatable screen presence, according to Italian film critic Massimo Benvegnù.
Benvegnù noted that while other prominent stars of the era, such as Anita Ekberg, Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot, and Jayne Mansfield (known as ‘maggiorate’), were celebrated for their voluptuous figures, Cardinale offered a more down-to-earth appeal. ‘She was less curvaceous and more girl next door. She was more real,’ he explained.
Interestingly, acting wasn’t her initial dream as a teenager. For a significant part of her early career, she even faced challenges speaking Italian, having been raised primarily with French.
Born Claude Joséphine Rose Cardinale on April 15, 1938, in the French protectorate of Tunisia, her parents, Francesco Cardinale and Yolanda Greco, were Sicilian immigrants.
The eldest of four children, she grew up within a close-knit Sicilian community in 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. Crowned the ‘most beautiful Italian girl in Tunisia,’ her prize was a trip to the Venice Film Festival, where her presence, particularly in a bikini, garnered significant media attention. Despite having acted in a few films already, she openly stated to reporters that an acting career was not her aspiration.
Claudia Cardinale during the 1950s in Italy. An Italian critic once observed, ‘In many films, she becomes an icon, something between reality and unreality.’
(Image credit: Reporters Associes/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty Images)
Following the festival, she famously graced the covers of numerous Italian magazines, often under headlines proclaiming her as ‘the girl who doesn’t want to make movies,’ as recounted by Mr. Benvegnù.
Upon returning to Tunisia, Claude initially turned down acting opportunities to live with her parents. Her daughter, Claudia Squitieri, later revealed in an interview that during her teenage years, Cardinale was sexually assaulted by an acquaintance, leading to a coercive and abusive relationship and ultimately, pregnancy. In 1957, she gave birth to her son, Patrick, in London. Due to the sensitive nature of the situation, her parents raised Patrick as her younger brother, a secret maintained until he was eight years old.
In that pivotal year, Italian producer Franco Cristaldi signed her to his studio, Vides Cinematografica (now Cristaldifilm), marking the official launch of her career under the name Claudia Cardinale.
Her breakthrough came in 1958 with Mario Monicelli’s comedic crime story ‘I Soliti Ignoti’ (‘Big Deal on Madonna Street’). This was followed by a rapid succession of major roles, including Federico Fellini’s Oscar-winning masterpiece ‘8½’ and Luchino Visconti’s ‘The Leopard’, both released in 1963.
Claudia Cardinale alongside Renato Salvatori in ‘Big Deal on Madonna Street’ (1958), the breakout film directed by Mario Monicelli.
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Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon in ‘The Leopard’ (1963). Cardinale credited the film’s director, Luchino Visconti, with teaching her ‘how to be beautiful.’
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox, via Everett Collection)
Mr. Benvegnù aptly summarized her burgeoning fame, stating, ‘Then she just became known as ‘Italy’s girlfriend,’ the girl of your dreams.’
Further cementing her status, Cardinale garnered critical and commercial acclaim in Luigi Comencini’s ‘La Ragazza di Bube’ (also known as ‘Bebo’s Girl’). Her performance earned her Italy’s esteemed Nastro d’Argento award for best actress. In the film, she portrayed Mara, a Tuscan peasant who finds love with a young partisan at the close of World War II, only for him to go into hiding after being implicated in a double homicide.
She married Mr. Cristaldi in Las Vegas in 1966. However, her daughter, Ms. Squitieri, revealed that Cardinale never considered this union ‘official,’ despite Cristaldi giving his surname to her son.
In Fellini’s ‘8½’, set within a lavish spa, Cardinale portrayed an actress and muse—also named Claudia—to the film’s protagonist, Guido Anselmi (played by Marcello Mastroianni). Her character represented his ideal woman, envisioned as the ingénue for a planned science fiction movie.
Claudia Cardinale in ‘8½’, where she personified an actress and muse, seen by the protagonist (Marcello Mastroianni) as his ultimate ideal woman.
(Image credit: Embassy, via Getty Images)
Anselmi’s perception of her in the film captured her public image: ‘You are one of the girls who passes out the healing water,’ he tells her. ‘She is beautiful, both young and ancient, a child and yet already a woman, authentic and radiant. There’s no doubt that she’s his salvation.’
This portrayal perfectly mirrored how audiences came to see Cardinale, according to Vito Zigarrio, a film critic, historian at the University of Rome, and Venice Film Festival organizer. He explained, ‘In many films she becomes an icon, something between reality and unreality, and this ambiguity between fantasy and reality makes the character very intense.’
Visconti’s epic period drama ‘The Leopard’ saw her as a young Sicilian debutante who captivated both a dashing soldier (Alain Delon) and his aristocratic uncle (Burt Lancaster). In her 2005 autobiography, ‘Mes étoiles’ (‘My Stars’), co-written with Danièle Georget, Cardinale shared, ‘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.’
In 1964, Cardinale embraced a comedic role in her first collaboration with an American director, Blake Edwards. She played a princess who misplaces a valuable jewel in ‘The Pink Panther’, a film also featuring Peter Sellers, David Niven, and Robert Wagner.
Claudia Cardinale alongside David Niven in Blake Edwards’s ‘The Pink Panther’ (1964). This comedic hit also featured Peter Sellers and Robert Wagner, marking Cardinale’s debut with an American director.
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Sergio Leone’s 1968 spaghetti western ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ provided another pivotal role for Cardinale. She portrayed a New Orleans prostitute who journeys to the American Southwest, only to find her husband-to-be tragically murdered by bandits upon her arrival.
Amidst a formidable cast of male antiheroes, including Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda, Cardinale’s singular female presence shone. Jay Weissberg, an American film critic in Rome, noted that she ‘was able to hold her own with these extremely strong, major actors, and conveying a sense of interiority that is quite palpable.’
This portrayal of rugged independence became a hallmark of her career, according to Antonio Monda, artistic director of the Rome Film Festival. He commented, ‘There was something free about her, a strong personality that would never be tamed. She was strongly independent.’
Claudia Cardinale pictured with her then-husband, Italian screenwriter and producer Franco Cristaldi, in 1969. Their marriage concluded around 1975.
(Image credit: Pierluigi Praturlon/Reporters Associati & Archivi — Mondadori Portfolio, via Getty Images)
Circa 1975, Cardinale divorced Cristaldi and began a relationship with director Pasquale Squitieri, an independent filmmaker with a reputation as a right-leaning provocateur. Mr. Monda remarked, ‘In a sense she wanted to emancipate herself. She didn’t want to be thought of as only the product of a great producer.’
In subsequent interviews, Cardinale revealed the extent of Cristaldi’s control over her life, detailing how he dictated almost every aspect and retained most of her earnings from American film projects. She told Variety, ‘I was just an employee, like an office worker.’
The complexities of their relationship, coupled with her subsequent affair with Pasquale Squitieri, led Cardinale to believe they were effectively blackballed from the Italian film industry. This prompted her move to France, where she rebuilt her career by taking on supporting roles.
She starred in nearly a dozen of Squitieri’s films. They welcomed a daughter in 1979 and remained partners for four decades, until his passing in 2017.
Describing her parents’ bond, Ms. Squitieri noted, ‘It was an unconventional relationship.’ They cohabited until 1989 and maintained a profoundly close connection thereafter.
Claudia Cardinale alongside Italian director Pasquale Squitieri in 1978. They had a daughter the following year and shared 40 years together until his death in 2017.
(Image credit: Jean-Louis Atlan/Sygma, via Getty Images)
Among her diverse roles, Cardinale was part of the all-star cast in the 1977 television mini-series ‘Jesus of Nazareth’, where she portrayed an adulteress facing the threat of stoning.
Early on, Cardinale looked up to French actress Brigitte Bardot, whom she later co-starred with in the 1971 French western comedy ‘Les Pétroleuses’ (‘The Legend of Frenchie King’), directed by Christian-Jaque. The film playfully satirized Hollywood clichés, featuring thrilling all-female shootouts and a memorable, spirited fistfight between the two leading ladies.
Ms. Squitieri revealed, ‘Bardot was her idol.’ She added that despite public expectations of a rivalry, the two actresses developed a strong friendship.
In Werner Herzog’s ‘Fitzcarraldo’ (1982), Cardinale, even in a supporting role opposite Klaus Kinski’s titular character, was central to the narrative. She played a brothel madame whose unwavering belief in her lover’s audacious plan to construct an opera house in the Amazon fueled his extraordinary endeavor to drag a steamship over a mountain.
Reviewing the film, Vincent Canby of The Times wrote, ‘Miss Cardinale is not onscreen as long as one might wish, but she not only lights up her role, she also lights up Mr. Kinski,’ observing that she ‘helps to transform Mr. Kinski into a genuinely charming screen presence.’
The film earned the prestigious top award at the Cannes Film Festival, bringing Cardinale new admirers and re-establishing her presence on the radar of film producers and casting directors for years.
In her later life, Cardinale resided with her son and daughter in Nemours. There, she founded a namesake foundation dedicated to supporting arts focused on women and environmental issues. In 2000, UNESCO appointed her as a goodwill ambassador, acknowledging ‘her commitment to improving the status of women and girls through education, as well as promoting and affirming their rights.’
Full details regarding her survivors were not immediately released.
Just two years prior, 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 Cardinale’s illustrious career.
Even as she aged, Cardinale maintained a consistent presence in cinema, though often in supporting roles. She worked extensively across various countries, particularly in France, her adopted home.
Her daughter, Ms. Squitieri, affectionately described her mother’s adaptable nature: ‘She is not a precious woman who has great needs, who is capricious because she is a star. She was always very humble in her requests. She always, always, always stopped to sign autographs. She detested the idea of body guards; she always wanted to be as close as she could to people. She felt very blessed by her luck.’