Claudia Cardinale, star of ’60s and ’70s European cinema, dies at 87

ROME (AP) — Acclaimed Italian actor Claudia Cardinale, who starred in among the most celebrated European movies of the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, has died in France, her agent mentioned Wednesday. She was 87.

Cardinale died in Nemours, France, surrounded by her kids, her agent Laurent Savry advised The Associated Press.

Praise for Cardinale’s expertise, magnificence and influence on the European cinema poured in on Wednesday, with French President Emmanuel Macron saying, “We French will always carry this Italian and global star in our hearts, in the eternity of cinema.”

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Cardinale starred in additional than 100 movies and made-for-television productions, however she was finest identified for embodying youthful purity in Federico Fellini’s “8½,” through which she co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni in 1963.

Cardinale additionally gained reward for her function as Angelica Sedara in Luchino Visconti’s award-winning display screen adaption of the historic novel “The Leopard” that very same yr and a reformed prostitute in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western “Once Upon a Time in the West” in 1968.

Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli supplied condolences to Cardinale’s household and hailed Cardinale’s magnificence and “exceptional talent” that impressed “milestones” of Italian cinema.

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“With the death of Claudia Cardinale, one of the greatest Italian actresses of all time has passed away,” he mentioned in a press release late Tuesday.

Cardinale started her film profession on the age of 17 after successful a magnificence contest in Tunisia, the place she was born of Sicilian mother and father who had emigrated to North Africa. The contest introduced her to the Venice Film Festival, the place she got here to the eye of the Italian film trade.

Before coming into the sweetness contest she had anticipated to turn out to be a faculty instructor.

“The fact I’m making movies is just an accident,” Cardinale recalled whereas accepting a lifetime achievement award on the Berlin Film Festival in 2002. “When they asked me ‘do you want to be in the movies?’ I said no and they insisted for six months.”

Her success got here within the wake of Sophia Loren’s worldwide stardom and he or she was touted as Italy’s reply to Brigitte Bardot. While by no means reaching the extent of success of the French actor, she nonetheless was thought of a star and labored with the main administrators in Europe and Hollywood.

“They gave me everything,” Cardinale mentioned. “It’s marvelous to live so many lives. I’ve been living more than 150 lives, totally different women.”

One of her earliest roles was as a black-clad Sicilian woman within the 1958 comedy basic “Big Deal on Madonna Street.” It was produced by Franco Cristaldi, who managed her early profession and to whom she was married from 1966 to 1975.

The sensuous brunette with monumental eyes was usually forged as a hot-blooded girl. As she had a deep voice and spoke Italian with a heavy French accent, her voice was dubbed in her early films.

Her profession in Hollywood introduced solely partial success as a result of she was not fascinated with giving up European movie. Nonetheless, she achieved some fame by teaming with Rock Hudson within the 1965 comedy thriller “Blindfold” and one other comedy “Don’t Make Waves” with Tony Curtis two years later.

Cardinale herself thought of the 1966 “The Professionals,” directed by Richard Brooks as the very best of her Hollywood movies, the place she starred alongside Burt Lancaster, Jack Palance, Robert Ryan and Lee Marvin.

In a 2002 interview with the Guardian, she defined that the Hollywood studio “wanted me to sign a contract of exclusivity, and I refused. Because I’m a European actress and I was going there for movies.”

“And I had a big opportunity with Richard Brooks, ‘The Professionals,’ which is really a magnificent movie,” she mentioned. “For me ‘The Professionals’ is the best I did in Hollywood.”

Among her trade prizes was a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement that she obtained on the Venice movie competition practically 40 years after her preliminary look on display screen.

In 2000, Cardinale was named a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for the protection of ladies’s rights.

She had two kids. One with Cristaldi and a second together with her later companion, Italian director Pasquale Squitieri.

Simpson, the principal author of this obituary, retired from The Associated Press in 2013. John Leicester contributed from Paris.