Claudia Cardinale, Italian cinema star of ‘8 ½’, ‘The Leopard’, dies aged 87

Claudia Cardinale, the Italian actress who starred in films including 8 ½ and The Leopard, has died aged 87.

Cardinale died at her home in Nemours, France in the company of her children, her agent Laurent Savry told the AFP news agency.

“She leaves us the legacy of a free and inspired woman both as a woman and as an artiste,” said Savry.

Cardinale was a key figure in the international expansion of European cinema in the 1960s, appearing in films by compatriots including Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti.

Born in Tunis, Tunisia in 1938 to Sicilian parents, Cardinale entered the film industry through winning a beauty contest aged 16 as ‘the most beautiful Italian woman in Tunisia’. The prize was a trip to Venice Film Festival, where she was approached by industry executives about working in film.

After a first screen role in Jacques Baratier’s Goha starring Omar Sharif, Cardinale broke out in the likes of Visconti’s 1960 crime caper Rocco and His Brothers.

1963 became an annus mirabilis for Cardinale via three major films. She renewed her collaboration with Visconti and lead actor Alain Delon in drama The Leopard, also starring Burt Lancaster.

She starred in Fellini’s metafictional classic 8 ½ as Claudia, a film star who Marcello Mastroianni’s film director casts as his ideal woman.

That same year Cardinale also made a significant US breakthrough as The Princess in The Pink Panther alongside Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau. Cardinale returned to the franchise in 1993’s Son of the Pink Panther.

Other major roles in the decade included 1967 sex comedy Don’t Make Waves and Sergio Leone’s Western Once Upon a Time in the West in 1968.

Cardinale returned to European cinema towards the end of the decade, winning Italy’s David di Donatello award for best actress for The Day of the Owl in 1968 and A Girl in Australia in 1972.

She maintained a successful screen career over more than 60 years, with roles in Werner Herzog’s 1982 Fitzcarraldo, and reuniting with Mastroianni in Marco Bellocchio’s Cannes selection Enrico IV in 1984.

Cardinale was awarded a lifetime achievement award at the 2002 Berlinale. A longtime advocate for women’s rights, she was named a Unesco Goodwill Ambassador in 2000 in recognition of her work in the field.

She had two children: Patrick, and Claudia. Cardinale lived with Italian director Pasquale Squitieri for 42 years until his death in 2017.