Italian Actress Claudia Cardinale Dies at 87

Claudia Cardinale, the Italian actress best known for her roles in “The Pink Panther,” “Once Upon a Time in the West” and “8½,” has died. She was 87.

Cardinale died Tuesday in Nemours, near Paris, her agent, Laurent Savry, confirmed to the Agence France-Presse.

“She leaves us the legacy of a free and inspired woman both as a woman and as an artiste,” Savry said in a statement.

Born in Tunisia on April 15, 1938, Cardinale was picked out of a crowd to win a beauty contest at age 16. The prize was a trip to the Venice Film Festival, where she was spotted by Italian producers.

Franco Cristaldi, who owned the production company Vides, and would go on to become Cardinale’s husband, offered her a seven-year contract, which she accepted because she was 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’s first movie under the Vides deal was the 1958 Italian heist film “Big Deal on Madonna Street,” directed by Mario Monicelli.

Her career blew up in the 1960s with roles in “Austerlitz,” “8½,” “The Leopard,” “The Pink Panther,” “Circus World,” “The Professionals,” “Once Upon a Time in the West,” and more.

In her 2017 Variety interview, Cardinale recalled how she filmed “The Leopard” and “8½” at the same time.

“Luchino wanted me dark-haired and Federico wanted me blonde-ish, so I had to change hair color every two weeks,” she explained. “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 worked in the movie industry for six more decades, notably appearing in 1993’s “Son of the Pink Panther” and 2014’s “Effie Gray.”

Her final film was Ridha Behi’s 2022 Italian-Tunisian drama “The Island of Forgiveness.”

Cardinale’s awards included an honorary 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 her two children.