Claudia Cardinale, star of '8½' and 'The Leopard,' dies at 87
[September 24, 2025]
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON
ROME (AP) — Acclaimed Italian actor Claudia Cardinale, who starred in
some of the most celebrated European films of the 1960s and 1970s, has
died in France, her agent said Wednesday. She was 87.
Cardinale died in Nemours, France, surrounded by her children, her agent
Laurent Savry told The Associated Press.
Praise for Cardinale's talent, beauty and impact 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.”
Cardinale starred in more than 100 films and made-for-television
productions, but she was best known for embodying youthful purity in
Federico Fellini’s “8½,” in which she co-starred with Marcello
Mastroianni in 1963.
Cardinale also won praise for her role as Angelica Sedara in Luchino
Visconti’s award-winning screen adaption of the historical novel “The
Leopard” that same year and a reformed prostitute in Sergio Leone’s
spaghetti western “Once Upon a Time in the West” in 1968.
Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli offered condolences to
Cardinale’s family and hailed Cardinale’s beauty and “exceptional
talent” that inspired “milestones” of Italian cinema.
“With the death of Claudia Cardinale, one of the greatest Italian
actresses of all time has passed away,” he said in a statement late
Tuesday.
Cardinale began her movie-career at the age of 17 after winning a beauty
contest in Tunisia, where she was born of Sicilian parents who had
emigrated to North Africa. The contest brought her to the Venice Film
Festival, where she came to the attention of the Italian movie industry.
Before entering the beauty contest she had expected to become a school
teacher.
“The fact I’m making movies is just an accident,” Cardinale recalled
while accepting a lifetime achievement award at 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 came in the wake of Sophia Loren’s international stardom and
she was touted as Italy’s answer to Brigitte Bardot. While never
achieving the level of success of the French actor, she nonetheless was
considered a star and worked with the leading directors in Europe and
Hollywood.
“They gave me everything,” Cardinale said. “It’s marvelous to live so
many lives. I’ve been living more than 150 lives, totally different
women.”
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Italian actress Claudia Cardinale appears at the Prix Lumieres
awards ceremony in Paris on Jan. 18, 2013. (AP Photo/Zacharie
Scheurer, File)
 One of her earliest roles was as a
black-clad Sicilian girl in the 1958 comedy classic “Big Deal on
Madonna Street.” It was produced by Franco Cristaldi, who managed
her early career and to whom she was married from 1966 to 1975.
The sensuous brunette with enormous eyes was often cast as a
hot-blooded woman. As she had a deep voice and spoke Italian with a
heavy French accent, her voice was dubbed in her early movies.
Her career in Hollywood brought only partial success because she was
not interested in giving up European film. Nonetheless, she achieved
some fame by teaming with Rock Hudson in the 1965 comedy thriller
“Blindfold” and another comedy “Don’t Make Waves” with Tony Curtis
two years later.
Cardinale herself considered the 1966 “The Professionals,” directed
by Richard Brooks as the best of her Hollywood films, where she
starred alongside Burt Lancaster, Jack Palance, Robert Ryan and Lee
Marvin.
In a 2002 interview with the Guardian, she explained 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 said. “For
me ‘The Professionals’ is the best I did in Hollywood.”
Among her industry prizes was a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement
that she received at the Venice film festival nearly 40 years after
her initial appearance on screen.
In 2000, Cardinale was named a goodwill ambassador for the U.N.
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for the defense of
women’s rights.
She had two children. One with Cristaldi and a second with her later
companion, Italian director Pasquale Squitieri.
___
Simpson, the principal writer of this obituary, retired from The
Associated Press in 2013. John Leicester contributed from Paris.
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