{"id":163474,"date":"2025-09-27T09:15:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T09:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/163474\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T09:15:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T09:15:08","slug":"claudia-cardinale-actress-1938-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/163474\/","title":{"rendered":"Claudia Cardinale, actress, 1938-2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/p>\n

In his celebrated novel The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa describes the arriviste Angelica Sedara as \u201cemanating from her whole person the invincible calm of a woman sure of her own beauty\u201d.<\/p>\n

The same could be said of Claudia Cardinale, who played Angelica in the 1963 masterpiece film adaptation and has died aged 87.\u00a0Scouted at a beauty pageant in her hometown Tunis, in Cardinale\u2019s six-decade career she won over audiences with layered performances and apparent vulnerability.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat initially drew directors to her was her voluptuousness in her youth but what they quickly discovered was the intelligence and nuance that lay behind that beauty,\u201d said Joshua Siegal, curator of the film department at New York\u2019s MoMA.<\/p>\n

\"AlainAlain Delon and Claudia Cardinale in a ballroom scene from Luchino Visconti\u2019s 1963 film \u2018The Leopard\u2019 \u00a9 Keystone\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Born in 1938 to Sicilian immigrants in the French protectorate of Tunisia, Claude Josephine Rose Cardinale was raised speaking French, Arabic and her parents\u2019 dialect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 1957, she was crowned \u201cthe most beautiful Italian girl in Tunis\u201d at a pageant that was part of the film industry\u2019s hunt for new faces. At the Venice film festival, she paraded at the Lido in an emerald green bikini before the paparazzi, and auditioned for Rome\u2019s national film school.<\/p>\n

She also met powerful film producer Franco Cristaldi; 14 years her senior, he became the dominant figure in her early professional and personal life. A seven-year, Hollywood-style contract allowed him to micromanage her career. <\/p>\n

During the 1960s and 70s, Cardinale worked with the most famous directors of Italy\u2019s golden age of cinema: Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Sergio Leone. She embodied the elegance and glamour of the time but continued acting until the last years of life.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was the quintessential Mediterranean actress,\u201d said Antonio Monda, professor of film at New York University. \u201cIt\u2019s an incredible, fascinating mixture of beauty and lightness \u2014 with pain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Underpinning Cardinale\u2019s performances were hidden personal traumas: a sexual assault as a teenager and what she later called an \u201cabusive relationship\u201d with an older man leading to an early pregnancy. In 1958, then 20, she secretly gave birth to a son. Cristaldi advised her to conceal the birth, fearing a scandal. Patrick was raised by her parents and initially passed off as a younger brother to avoid damaging her nascent career.<\/p>\n

Though Cardinale was deliberately evasive about the details of this dark chapter of her life, she later told interviewers that her drive as an actress was initially fuelled by it.\u00a0\u201cIf I started working early, it\u2019s because of him [Patrick] \u2014 to make myself independent,\u201d she said in 2018. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be an actress. It was an accident.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ClaudiaCardinale on the set of the 1967 film \u2018To Hell With Heroes\u2019. The actress came to symbolise modern Italian women in a man\u2019s world \u00a9 UPI\/Bettmann Archive\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Yet Cardinale came to symbolise modern Italian women in a man\u2019s world. The characters she played \u201cpursued their own path,\u201d said Fabio Melelli, a biographer. \u201cEven in her private life, she made courageous choices as an independent, strong woman, choices that were often not convenient.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She first caught attention with a cameo in Mario Monicelli\u2019s 1958 crime caper, Big Deal on Madonna Street, and other parts followed. Initially, her voice was dubbed.\u00a0The depth of her talent was clear in 1963 with the release of two major films: The Leopard, from the perfectionist Visconti; and 8 1\/2, directed by Fellini, who shot without a script, relied on improvisation and used Cardinale\u2019s own voice for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not beauty that creates such an enduring career,\u201d said Siegal, but the \u201cability to shape her performances to the wishes of the filmmakers that she worked with.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her first Hollywood film, The Pink Panther, followed, prompting co-star David Niven to say she was Italy\u2019s best creation since spaghetti. She had a short stint in Hollywood, starring in Leone\u2019s 1968 Once Upon a Time in the West.<\/p>\n

Eventually, Cardinale\u2019s relationship with Cristaldi soured; she later complained he treated her \u201cas an employee\u201d. In 1975, she became involved with the radical film director Pasquale Squitieri, who she called \u201cthe man of my life\u201d, and they had a daughter. <\/p>\n

\"ClaudiaCardinale is photographed during her book presentation in Madrid in 2009 \u00a9 Pierre-Philippe Marcou\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Her relationship with such an outsider in the cosy Rome film industry affected her career. She veered towards more unconventional films, including Werner Herzog\u2019s Fitzcarraldo. Playing Mussolini\u2019s mistress Clara Petacci, in Squitieri\u2019s 1984 film Claretta, was a controversial step.<\/p>\n

At the Cannes film festival in 2017, Cardinale advised that an actress needs \u201cgreat inner strength\u201d in order to \u201cbecome someone else in front of the camera and then go back to being themselves\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-163474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}