Actress: Farewell to a film icon – Claudia Cardinale is dead

It all started in Tunisia. Claudia Cardinale was chosen as the most beautiful Italian of Tunisia on a beauty competition in the capital Tunis. She was given a trip to the Venice film festival, where she finally got a taste. A decades of acting career began, which brought the woman with the brilliant name to Hollywood and to the side of the largest cinema stars.

Cardinale has now died at the age of 87. Italy’s Minister of Culture Alessandro Giuli praised her as “one of the greatest Italian actresses of all time”. Initially, the French news agency AFP reported on its death, citing Cardinales Agent Laurent Savry.

“La Cardinale”, as it is often only called, formed the triumvirate of the Italian film various of the 1960s together with the two stars Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida. But Cardinale remained a little less known internationally compared to her two colleagues. She could offer everything that makes a world star: acting talent, a strong charisma and a career in Hollywood. She played with all the important actors of her time.

Cardinale was showered with compliments. “The most beautiful Italian invention according to Spaghetti” she called her drama partner David Niven out of strip “The Rosarote Panther” (1963). Born in Maghreb and most recently at home in France, she always felt like an Italian – mind you as a southern Italian. The Mediterranean country also adorned itself with the “indomitable” cinema star, who was involved after an exciting film career as an activist for women’s rights.

Childhood in Tunisia as a “golden age”

The spirited Italian looked back on an intoxicating career and an eventful life. She succeeded in the productions of Lexphas of Italian film and gained international fame with her roles. With Fellini’s “8 1/2”, Viscontis “The Leopard” (both 1963) and Sergio Leones Italo-Western “Play me the song of death” (1968), she secured a place in film history.

In her last films she was seen as a matriarch or grandmother. In the Netflix production “Rogue City” (2020) and the demanding drama “The Island of Forgiveness” (2022), which deals with the life of a Tunisian of Italian descent, she recently played supporting roles.

Cardinale had a strong connection to Tunisia. In 1938 she was born in Tunis as a daughter of Sicilian emigrants and grew up in three languages ​​- with French, Arabic and the Sicilian. The film diva once described her childhood in the North African country as a “golden age” full of “magical moments”. In her old home, one is still proud to this day: La Goulette, a suburb of Tunis’ where Cardinale was born, ceremoniously named a street after her in 2022 – she was on site at the time.

Fighter for women’s rights

It was often called “the unambiguous”. A book about her life that her daughter Claudia Squitieri published is just that. “Claudia’s inadmissibility is a thread that runs through her whole life. She can be found in the decisions of her life as well as in her roles,” writes the daughter – with the Cardinale together in Fontainebleau, who lived together – in the foreword of the book.

So some canvas casanovas that gave her advances showed her cold shoulder. This is how Cardinale described it. From Marlon Brando to Alain Delon, many had tried it, but she rejected them all.

Self -determination and the occurrence of women’s rights were always important to her. Cardinale was a supporter of movements such as #metoo or time’s up. As a young woman, she was raped and pregnant by her tormentor. At the time, she spent her son at the urge of her partner and manager at the time as a little brother. At the latest as a UNESCO ambassador, she saw the horror that other women are done to.

It has become more cardinal on the cinema screen in recent years, but more than ever, she recently shone as a fighter for women’s rights. In an interview, she gave young people on the way: “It is uncertain times for all of us. Young people, especially girls, I only give advice: protect your dignity. Always, at any time, under all circumstances.”