Claudia Cardinale, a glamorous symbol of post-war Italian cinema who had a long and varied acting career in film and theater, died at 87, according to AFP and other French media outlets.
Raised in Tunisia in a family of Sicilian origin, Cardinale was introduced to the world of cinema in 1957 after winning a beauty contest in Tunis and being rewarded with a trip to the Venice Film Festival.
Her voice had to be dubbed in her early Italian screen roles because she grew up in a family where Sicilian dialect was spoken and was educated in a French-language school.
The start of her career was also complicated by a secret pregnancy which, according to her, resulted from an abusive relationship. She gave birth to a son, Patrick, in London in 1958, and passed him off as a younger brother for several years while he was raised by her parents.
After a series of minor roles, she achieved international fame in 1963, starring in Federico Fellini’s “8½” and also alongside Burt Lancaster in “The Leopard” that same year.
Filming two movies at the same time brought complications, with Cardinale recalling that she had to use different hair colors for the two roles.
In a 2013 interview with the British newspaper The Guardian, Cardinale compared the approaches of directors Fellini and Luchino Visconti, who directed “The Leopard”.
“He (Fellini) couldn’t film without noise. With Visconti, it was the opposite, like doing theater. We couldn’t say a word. Very serious,” she said.
Her rising profile opened doors to Hollywood productions and she appeared in the comedy “The Pink Panther,” directed by Blake Edwards, and in Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West” in 1968.
Ostracism
Cardinale’s career suffered a blow in the 1970s after she separated from film producer Franco Cristaldi to begin a long-term relationship with the filmmaker 
Pasquale Squitieri, with whom she had a daughter, also named Claudia.
Angry at being replaced by another man, Cristaldi asked friends and associates in the Italian film industry to ostracize Cardinale, which resulted, for example, in Visconti’s refusal to cast her in his last film, “The Innocent” (1976).
“It was a very delicate moment. I discovered I had no money in my bank account,” Cardinale said about that period.
Franco Zeffirelli ended up helping her, casting her in the 1977 television miniseries “Jesus of Nazareth.” She then continued working with other European directors, including Werner Herzog and Marco Bellocchio.
Cardinale, with a husky voice and a chain smoker, had the reputation of being a fiercely independent and free-spirited woman who once challenged Vatican protocol by attending a meeting with Pope Paul VI in a miniskirt.
A 2022 book celebrating her life was titled “Claudia Cardinale. The Indomitable” (“Claudia Cardinale. The Indomitable,” in free translation).
Living much of her time in France and a friend of presidents François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, Cardinale turned to theater at the turn of the century, receiving praise for her stage appearances.
She continued making films in various European languages until the end of her life, appearing in the Swiss TV series Bulle in 2020.
Awarded a lifetime achievement honor at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival, she said acting was a great career.
“I lived more than 150 lives, prostitute, saint, romantic, all kinds of women, and it’s wonderful to have this opportunity to change yourself,” she said.
“I worked with the most important directors. They gave me everything.”
Source: www.brasil247.com