Actress: Farewell to an icon – Claudia Cardinale is dead

It all started in Tunisia. Claudia Cardinale was chosen as the most beautiful Italian in the country on a beauty competition in the capital Tunis. She won a trip to the film festival in Venice. There she got a taste. The woman led the career with the brilliant surname to Hollywood and to the side of the greatest cinema stars of her time. Now she died at the age of 87, near Paris.

In the 1960s, “La Cardinale”, which can also be translated as “Die Kardinälin”, formed the triumvirate of the great divas of Italian cinema with Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida. Compared to the other two, she remained a little less known internationally. She could offer everything that makes a world star: acting talent, charisma and a career in Hollywood.

“The most beautiful Italian invention according to Spaghetti”

Cardinale was showered with compliments. “The most beautiful Italian invention according to Spaghetti” she called her partner David Niven from the film “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.

Her home country liked to decorate herself with the “indomeable”, who has been involved in women’s rights in her past few years. The legal government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni praised her as “one of the greatest Italian actresses of all time”.

Childhood in Tunisia as a “golden age”

Cardinale shot with the luminaries of the Italian cinema, in very different roles and genres. With Federico Fellini’s “8 1/2”, Luchino Viscontis “The Leopard” (both films from 1963) and Sergio Leones Italo-Western “Play me the song of death” (1968), she secured a place in film history. With the German director Werner Herzog and at the side of the eternal filming weight Klaus Kinski, she was seen in “Fitzcarraldo” in 1982.

In her last films she was seen as a matriarch or grandmother. In Netflix production “Rogue City” (2020) and the drama “The Island of Forgiveness” (2022), which deals with the life of a Tunisian of Italian descent, she only played supporting roles. The Italian press praised her as a great rebel until the end. A quote from her: “It is not true that life is a long, quiet flow. Experience has taught me that peace is very often the opposite of life.”

Cardinale was born in Tunis in 1938 as a daughter of Sicilian emigrants. She grew up in three languages: with French, Arabic and the Sicilian. The Diva described her childhood as a “golden age” full of “magical moments”. Even in her country of birth, you are still proud of her: La Goulette, a suburb of Tunis, where she was born, named a street after her in 2022. She did not miss the opportunity to be there.

Fighter for women’s rights

“The Unamible” also means a book about her life that her daughter Claudia Squitieri published. “Claudia’s indom you 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 – in the foreword.

She showed several canvas casanovas that gave her advances. This is how Cardinale described it. From Marlon Brando to Alain Delon, many had tried it, but she rejected them all. Self -determination and women’s rights were always important to her. “I have always thought that the woman was stronger than the man,” she said as a UNESCO ambassador. “Because the woman gives life.”

Own experience with #metoo committed

In recent years, cardinal movements such as #metoo or times up have supported women’s sexual abuse. She spoke from experience. As a young woman, she was raped and also pregnant by her tormentor. She got the child. She then spent her son Patrick as her little brother at the urge of her partner and manager at the time. Later she received her daughter with her long -time partner, the Italian film producer Pasquale Squitieri.

Her most important awards include the Golden Lion at the Film Festival in Venice and the Golden Bear of the Berlinale. In recent years she has rarely been seen on the cinema screen. More than ever, she recently shone as a fighter for women’s rights. In one of the last interviews, she gave the offspring 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.”