Legendary Actress Dead At 87

Claudia Cardinale, the sensational Italian actress best known for her performances in the “Pink Panther,” “Once Upon a Time in the West,” and “8 1/2,” died this week at 87.

Cardinale passed away in Nemours, just outside Paris, on Tuesday, her agent confirmed.

“She leaves us the legacy of a free and inspired woman both as a woman and as an artiste,” Laurent Savry told the Agence France-Presse in a statement.

Born Apr. 15, 1938, Cardinale received immediate attention for her striking looks, even at an early age. She was selected as the winner of a beauty competition at age 16, where she was awarded a trip to the Venice Film Festival. It was there that movie producers convinced Cardinale to take her first acting role.

She married Franco Cristaldi, owner of the Italian production company Vides, who signed her to a seven-year deal with his studio. She later admitted to signing the deal because she became pregnant after being raped.

“One day as I was walking home from school in Tunis a man in a car grabbed me and raped me and I became pregnant,” she told Variety in 2017. “After that, my mother and my sister stayed close to me. I gave birth in London, because in those days it would have been a scandal.”

“We pretended that my son was my little brother. I didn’t want to become an actress; I did it so I could be independent,” Cardinale added.

Cardinale debuted in the 1958 Italian film “Big Deal on Madonna Street.”

Beginning in the 1960s, Cardinale’s ability to learn lines and lend demure to any feature film landed her success in “Austerlitz,” “8½,” “The Leopard,” “The Pink Panther,” “Circus World,” “The Professionals,” “Once Upon a Time in the West,” and more, the NY Post reported.

Never one to quit a gig, Cardinale recalled in her 2017 interview how she balanced her time to film both “The Leopard” and “8 1/2,” which were filming concurrently.

“Luchino wanted me dark-haired and Federico wanted me blonde-ish, so I had to change hair color every two weeks,” she explained to Variety. “It was a magic moment for me. They were very different directors. Being on set with Luchino was like being in the theater; we had rehearsals and all that. With Federico there was no script, it was all improvised. Those two movies both really took my career to another level.”

Cardinale retired from acting after six decades, with some of her final performances in 1993’s “Son of the Pink Panther,” 2014’s “Effie Gray,” and the 2022 Italian-Tunisian drama “The Island of Forgiveness.”

Some of her lifetime awards include the Golden Lion at the 1993 Venice Film Festival and an honorary Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival.

“If you want to practice this craft, you have to have inner strength,” she shared in a 2014 interview. “Otherwise, you’ll lose your idea of who you are.”

Cardinale is survived by two children.