Claudia Cardinale, the sexy Italian movie star who appeared in classic Italian films including Fellini’s “8½” and Visconti’s “Rocco and His Brothers” and “The Leopard,” Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Western “Once Upon a Time in the West,” as well as “The Pink Panther,” has died. She was 87.
Her agent told AFP that she died in Nemours, near Paris. “She leaves us the legacy of a free and inspired woman both as a woman and as an artiste,” Laurent Savry said in a statement.
Early in her career Cardinale made very distinct impressions in supporting roles: Amid a number of astounding performances in Visconti’s “Rocco and His Brothers,” for example, she still stood out with an impressive turn as the oldest brother’s new wife; similarly, in the director’s “The Leopard,” her sexy effervescence as the Alain Delon character’s bride was memorable even if Burt Lancaster’s towering performance dominated the picture.
In Fellini’s “8½” she was second credited after Marcello Mastroianni for her role as Claudia, an elusive, ethereal muse, seductive and imaginary, who offers, as Roger Ebert put it, “the tantalizing possibility that all will be forgiven.”
She also starred opposite Jean Paul Belmondo in Philippe de Broca’s French period adventure “Cartouche” (1963). The New York Times offered its embarrassingly lusty approval: “The beautiful brunette Claudia Cardinale, who gives her all, including her life, so that he may woo his noble lady, is nobly endowed herself. And a quick, flashing smile, a pleasingly husky voice and a sense of humor add to the physical attributes not hidden by her gypsy costumes.”
In Blake Edwards’ 1963 caper comedy classic “The Pink Panther,” she starred as the Princess Dahla, who owns the jewel of the title that the thief known as the Phantom (David Niven) seeks to steal. (The actress returned to the franchise after Peter Sellers’ death for a role in 1993’s “Son of the Pink Panther,” starring Roberto Benigni.)
Cardinale did not have a lot to do in Richard Brooks’ 1966 Western “The Professionals,” but the plot did turn on her character: She played the wife of a wealthy man (Ralph Bellamy) who’s kidnapped by a Mexican bandit; the professionals of the title, played by Burt Lancaster and Lee Marvin, are hired to retrieve her. The film was Oscar nominated for director, screenplay and cinematography.
In Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Western “Once Upon a Time in the West” — ranked No. 29 on the IMDb’s Top 250 — Cardinale has one great moment as her character, a former prostitute who’s now married with children, arrives at her husband’s homestead after a trip from New Orleans to discover first a funeral procession and then the bodies of her dead offspring.
In the highly regarded 1977 miniseries “Jesus of Nazareth,” starring Robert Powell, Cardinale appeared as the Adulteress. The actress also had a substantial supporting role in the 1983 NBC miniseries “Princess Daisy,” based on the Judith Krantz novel.
She appeared in Werner Herzog’s notorious “Fitzcarraldo” (1982) — the film about a madman’s bizarrely noble effort that was itself a bizarrely mad but noble effort — as a madam who loves Klaus Kinski’s Fitzgerald, who seeks to drag a steamship across the Brazilian jungle, make a lot of money with it, build an opera house in the jungle and invite Caruso to sing in it.
In 1984 Cardinale starred opposite Mastroianni in Marco Bellocchio’s feature adaptation of Pirandello’s “Enrico IV” (Henry IV), and the film was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Claude Joséphine Rose Cardinale was born in Tunis, in what is now Tunisia, to parents of Sicilian heritage. Her native tongues were French, Tunisian Arabic and the Sicilian language of her parents — she did not learn to speak Italian until she had already begun to be cast in Italian films.
She made her film debut in 1958’s “Goha,” by Jacques Baratier, who had wanted a native Tunisian to cast opposite Omar Sharif.
An Italian cinema organization in Tunis organized a competition to find the most beautiful Italian girl in Tunisia; the prize was a trip to Venice during the Venice Film Festival. Italian film producers spotted her there, and she was invited to attend the Experimental Center of Cinematography in Rome, but she did not do well there, in part because of her lack of fluency in Italian, and dropped out after three months — which became a cover story in a popular magazine.
Back in Tunis, she found that she was pregnant, and she was determined to keep the child though she was still in her teens; luckily, Franco Cristaldi, who owned the production company Vides, offered her a seven-year exclusive contract. He managed her early career, and they were married from 1966 until 1975.
Her first film under the new deal was Mario Monicelli’s 1958 heist film spoof “Big Deal on Madonna Street,” starring Vittorio Gassman and Marcello Mastroianni, which was Oscar nominated for best foreign-language film.
She quickly became a very busy player on the Italian movie scene, with six features in 1959 and four in 1960. She was among the many stars in Abel Gance’s 1960 epic “The Battle of Austerlitz.”
The actress worked steadily for the next five-plus decades.
Cardinale returned to Tunisia for Mehdu Ben Attia’s 2010 film “The String,” in which she played the wealthy mother of a gay Arab raised in France. She also appeared in Spanish director Fernando Trueba’s 2012 “The Artist and the Model” as the wife of the artist played by Jean Rochefort. Critic Rick Marianetti said: “Cardinale is wonderful — spritely and radiant — it’s difficult to comprehend that she appeared in the original ‘The Pink Panther’ and Fellini’s ‘8 ½’ in 1963.”
More recently she appeared in 2014’s Emma Thompson-scripted “Effie Gray,” the story of Victorian art critic John Ruskin’s wife, which starred Dakota Fanning.
The actress won an honorary Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival, a career Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1993 and a career David at Italy’s David di Donatello Awards in 1997.
She had won a special David in 1961 for her performance in Valerio Zurlini’s “Girl with a Suitcase” and best actress Davids for Damiano Damiani’s “Mafia” in 1968 and Luigi Zampa’s “A Girl in Australia” in 1971.
