Claudia Cardinale, the Tunisian-born Italian actress best known for her role in the 1963 classic ‘The Leopard’, has died at 87.
Laurent Savry, Cardinale’s agent, revealed that she passed away on Tuesday in the company of her children at Nemours, France.
The cause of her death was, however, not disclosed.
Cardinale was born Claude Joséphine Rose Cardin on April 15, 1938, in La Goulette, Tunisia, to a Sicilian father and a French mother.
She won a beauty contest at 16 that saw her declared “the most beautiful Italian woman in Tunis”. The win led to her invitation to the Venice Film Festival and helped launch her film career, though she had originally hoped to become a schoolteacher.
Her early career, however, was not without struggles.
While picking up small roles as a teenager, she became pregnant after being raped by a film producer. With the support of a mentor, she gave birth in secret in London and, for years, introduced her son Patrick as her younger brother.
Having grown up speaking French, Arabic, and her parents’ Sicilian dialect, her accent was initially considered unsuitable for Italian cinema and her voice was dubbed by other actors.
She broke through in 1963 with Fellini’s Oscar-winning ‘8½’ and Visconti’s period epic ‘The Leopard,’ where she insisted on using her own voice.
From then, Cardinale enjoyed a six-decade career, starring in films such as ‘Careless’, ‘The Lion Are Loose’, ‘The Pink Panther’, ‘La Ragazza Di Bube’, and ‘Time of Indifference’.
In 2000, she was appointed UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in recognition of her advocacy for women’s rights, and in 2002, she received a lifetime achievement award at the Berlin Film Festival.
She is survived by Patrick and Claudia, the daughter she had with Italian film director Pasquale Squitieri.
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