Actress Claudia Cardinale, a major figure in Italian cinema, bows out

“The most beautiful Italian in Tunis”! It was by winning a beauty competition, under the age of 18, that Claudia Cardinale, born of Sicilian parents emigrated to North Africa, wins a trip to the Mostra de Venice, where she immediately noticed. Having become an actress, she quickly climbed the features of the celebrity in Italy. With her huge eyes, her sensual body and her hoarse voice, she inspires the greatest filmmakers of her time. Luchino Visconti (Sandra, 1965), Federico Fellini (eight and a half, 1963), Richard Brooks (La Panther Rose, 1964), Sergio Leone (Once upon a time in the West, 1968) and Henri Verneuil (the Lions are released, 1961) offered her magnificent roles in which she embodies women.

Because far from confining herself to the jobs of young first to the sensual physique, the actress will always choose her roles with sparing and intelligence. From Hollywood to Cinecitta via the City of Light, it will widen on the contrary its palette of play, by embodying fanciful, fierce, sometimes troubled and often bright characters.

The notoriety of the actress explodes to the French public at the time of the exit of Luchino Visconti’s cheetah, she bursts the screen alongside Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon. The film received the Palme d’Or in 1963. Thus, the young girl from Tunis became “one of the biggest Italian actresses of all time” for the Italian Minister of Culture which paid tribute to him just after his disappearance. Immortelle of the seventh art, Claudia Cardinale is forever.