Grief for Claudia Cardinale: Cinema legend dies at the age of 87

The film world mourns one of its biggest icons: Claudia Cardinale (1938-2025) is dead. The French-Italian actress, who wrote the song about death “with films such as” Der Leopard “or” Playing the Song of Death “, died on Tuesday at the age of 87 near Paris, reports on her agent Laurent Savry. She died “in the presence of her children”.

On April 15, 1938 near Tunis, born as the daughter of a French woman and a Sicilian, Cardinale opened her extraordinary beauty early on the doors to the film world. Already as a teenager, she was discovered in a beauty competition, voted “most beautiful Italian of Tunis” and thus attracted the attention of the film world at the film festival in Venice.

After a few roles in Italian productions in the late 1950s, she made her breakthrough when the great masters of Italian cinemas became aware of her. Luchino Visconti brought her in front of the camera for “Rocco and his brothers” (1960) and “The Leopard” (1963). Federico Fellini entrusted her roles in several of his works, including “eight and a half” (1963), where she created unforgettable scenes as one of the many women in the life of director Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni).

Also in the US comedy “The Rosarote Panther” she played alongside Peter Seller’s’ Inspector Jacques Clouseau and made the jump to Hollywood early on. But it was Sergio Leone who, with “Play me the song of death” (1968), gave her one of her most iconic roles – as an independent wife Jill Mcbain, who has to prevail against stubborn men after the death of her husband in the wild west and defend her rights. A classic not just the western genre.

“She leaves us the legacy of a free and inspired woman, both as a person and as an artist,” her agent praised the deceased.