Claudia Cardinale, star of ‘The Leopard,’ dead at…
Acclaimed Italian actor Claudia Cardinale, who starred in some of the most celebrated European movies of the Sixties and Seventies, has died, AFP reported Tuesday. She was 87.
She starred in more than 100 movies and made-for-television productions, but she was best identified for embodying youthful purity in Federico Fellini’s “8½,” in which she co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni in 1963.
Cardinale also gained reward for her function as Angelica Sedara in Luchino Visconti’s award-winning screen adaption of the historic novel “The Leopard” that same yr and a reformed prostitute in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western “Once Upon a Time in the West” in 1968.
Photo taken in May 1963 reveals Italian actress Claudia Cardinale smiling at her followers before the presentation of the film “8½” directed by Italian director Federico Fellini at the sixteenth Cannes movie pageant. AFP via Getty Images
She died in Nemours, France, surrounded by her kids, her agent Laurent Savry told AFP. Savry and his company didn’t immediately return emailed requests for remark from The Associated Press.
Cardinale started her movie-career at the age of 17 after successful a magnificence contest in Tunisia, where she was born of Sicilian mother and father who had emigrated to North Africa. The contest introduced her to the Venice Film Festival, where she got here to the eye of the Italian film industry.
Before coming into the wonder contest she had anticipated to develop into a college instructor.
“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.”
Italian actress Claudia Cardinale poses at the Museum in Tours on February 14, 2015. AFP via Getty Images
Her success got here in the wake of Sophia Loren’s worldwide stardom and she was touted as Italy’s reply to Brigitte Bardot. While never reaching the extent of success of the French actor, she nonetheless was thought of a star and labored with the main administrators 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.”
One of her earliest roles was as a black-clad Sicilian lady in the 1958 comedy basic “Big Deal on Madonna Street.” It was produced by Franco Cristaldi, who managed her early profession and to whom she was married from 1966 to 1975.
Actress Claudia Cardinale seems in 1965. AP
The sensuous brunette with huge eyes was often forged as a hot-blooded girl. As she had a deep voice and spoke Italian with a heavy French accent, her voice was dubbed in her early motion pictures.
Her profession in Hollywood introduced only partial success because she was not in giving up European movie. 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 thought of the 1966 “The Professionals,” directed by Richard Brooks as the best of her Hollywood movies, where she starred alongside Burt Lancaster, Jack Palance, Robert Ryan and Lee Marvin.
Italian actress Claudia Cardinale attends a press convention during the 2nd Budapest Classic Film Marathon in Budapest, Hungary on Sept. 6, 2018. AP
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 obtained at the Venice movie pageant almost 40 years after her initial look on screen.
In 2000, Cardinale was named a goodwill ambassador for the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for the protection of ladies’s rights.
She had two kids. One with Cristaldi and a second with her later companion, Italian director Pasquale Squitieri.
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