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It was no secret that beauty pageants could be a fast track into movies in post-war Italy. But few rose with the speed of Claudia Cardinale. Within four years, ‘The Most Beautiful Italian Girl in Tunisia,’ would be both a cineaste’s darling and a pin-up to rival Bardot (BB vs CC). Her distinctive voice, caught between a whisper and a rasp, smile like a Sicilian summer and prodigious work ethic - she has made almost 150 films – saw her outdistance early comparisons to Lollobrigida and Loren and forge a distinguished, still-thriving international career.

1962 was Cardinale’s Annus Mirabilis. Luchino Visconti cast her in The Leopard, his elegiac adaptation of Lampedusa’s novel, set in Sicily at the time of the Risorgimento. Cardinale played Anjelica, the ravishing daughter of a wealthy parvenu, bartered into the family of the Prince of Salina (Burt Lancaster) by marriage. As the old order crumbles, her frank sensuality and unapologetic vulgarity are the signifiers of a future foretold. The movie’s majestic sweep, sumptuous décor and haunting score (by Nino Rota) won it the Palme d’Or at Cannes. And though reception elsewhere was mixed following some injudicious cutting and dubbing, today it is widely regarded as Visconti’s masterpiece.

At the same time, Federico Fellini cast Cardinale in 8 1/2 as a fantasy made flesh (called Claudia) one of a harem of women who surrounds the creatively blocked film director, Guido (Marcello Mastroianni). The movie pivots in tone from comedy to drama to fantasy. Critic Pauline Kael thought it a structural disaster but few denied its dreamlike splendour. Cardinale recalled making the two films concurrently, commuting between Rome and Sicily. “With Luchino it was a theatre piece, everything was rehearsed, nothing improvised. With Federico, the opposite, no script, chaos. Totally improvised. I had very long hair. Luchino wanted it dark. Federico lighter. I was dying it every two weeks. They almost hated each other”.

She was born Claude Rose Cardinale, in La Goulette, a French protectorate of Tunisia, to Italian immigrant parents, in 1938. Despite appearing in a short film Anneaux d’or while still studying and playing a minor role in Goah (1957) with Omar Sharif, which was filmed locally, she professed little interest in movies.

Fate intervened in 1957, when she won a beauty contest (Cardinale had not entered, but was spotted in the audience wearing a backless white dress) and the prize a trip to the Venice film festival where her lush beauty and shy demeanour caused a frenzy among photographers and piqued the interest of producer Franco Cristaldi. She was persuaded, somewhat reluctantly, to study acting at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, but quickly returned home, prompting the magazine Epoca to run a cover story on ‘the girl who abandoned her chance in movies’.

In 1958, Cardinale found herself pregnant, the result of an abusive relationship with an older man. Determined to keep the baby, she signed an exclusive contract with Cristaldi and his company Vides Cinematografica, in order, she wrote in her memoir, to ensure financial independence. “Films saved me, my baby and our family” she said.

The contract was draconian, Cardinale was put on a monthly salary, told what to wear, how much she should weigh, and who she could see. She had already appeared in in three movies by the time Cristaldi arranged for her to have the baby out of sight in London. Cardinale’s son, Patrick was born in September and for several years would be brought up in the family home as her brother, Cardinale forbidden by her contract to acknowledge him in public.  

She began to work in earnest, Cristaldi’s plan being that she play small roles but with the best directors, thus: Bolgnini’s Il bell’ Antonio, Abel Gance’s Napoleon ad Austerlitz and Visconti’s Rocco and his Brothers, all in1960. She had a starring role in Zurlini’s Girl with a Suitcase (1961) and in France she was rumbustious foil for Belmondo in Cartouche (1962) prompting Paris Match to wonder if she was indeed ‘La jeune rivale de BB’. The same year, Alberto Moravia profiled her in Esquire, dubbing her ‘the new Love Goddess’. In 1963 she appeared on 250 magazine covers.

Cardinale consolidated her international status by appearing in two Hollywood films, both shot in Europe. In Blake Edwards’ heist comedy The Pink Panther (1963), which introduced Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, she was an Indian princess, dressed by Yves Saint Laurent. Her co-star, David Niven, described her as the happiest thing to come out of Italy since Spaghetti. In Circus World (1964), she was the daughter of John Wayne and Rita Hayworth in an old-fashioned melodrama, shot in Spain. Cardinale remembers sitting beside Hayworth in a makeup chair, “I was beautiful once” murmured Gilda. Cardinale burst into tears.

Universal brought her to Hollywood, but she refused a seven-year contract and her films there were forgettable at best apart from Peter Brooks’ western The Professionals (1966), in which her fiery spirit drove the plot as four veterans (Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Woody Strode and Robert Ryan) set out to rescue her from a hoax kidnap. Life magazine followed her into the Arizona desert and photographed her bathing in a barrel, but she was already thinking of home “I’m a European. That’s where I work”.

True to her word, she returned to Italy to star in Sergio Leone’s operatic Once Upon A Time In The West (1968) as a Jill, a former prostitute and now widowed owner of a disputed tract of land. It was the only significant female role the in a spaghetti western aside from Lina Wertmuller’s little seen The Belle Starr story (1968) with Elsa Martinelli. The movie was shot at Cinecittà, in Spain and on location in Utah and ran to almost three hours, and Cardinale once again found herself at the centre of a classic. Around the same time, as rumours began to spread about her family situation, she sat down with the journalist Enzo Biagni and finally told her story.

In 1971 she co-starred with Bardot in the lacklustre Legend of Frenchie King. Journalists descended en masse, observing their twin Rolls Royces (BB’s white, CC’s grey) parked side by side in the Almeria desert. “BB comes before CC, naturally,” observed Bardot, already tiring of a movie career. Cardinale persuaded her to not use a stunt double in their pivotal fight scene and the two became lasting friends. Cardinale took to her role with gusto, Bardot ‘looked like a cat thrown into a bath every time she is asked to so much as get on a nice horse,’ according to one French critic, who dismissed the film ‘a Christmas present for dunces’.

Cardinale left Cristaldi in 1975 (they had married in the US in 1966, but the marriage was not recognised in Italy) for director Pasquale Squitieri. She also left Vides, finally freeing herself of her contract. “Freedom has its price”, she said. The price was high: “I was doing four movies a year, paid almost nothing….I had no money in the bank.” It had all gone to Vides. She began again and gradually re-established her career. Zefferelli cast her as Mary Magdelene in Jesus of Nazareth (1977); She was in Werner Herzog’s epic Fitzcarraldo (1982) shot in the Amazon, with the notoriously unpredictable Klaus Kinski whom one cast member offered to kill; and she won a Nastro d’Argento Best Actress award for her performance in Claretta. (1984), directed by Squitieri.

Since then, she has appeared in dozens of movies and television productions in Italy, France, Spain, Tunisia, Portugal, Britain and America. She made her stage debut in 2000, and 2005 took on Tennesse Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth, in Italian. She had a daughter, Claudia, with Squiteri and remained with him (albeit in different cities, she in Paris, he in Rome) until his death in 2017. A gracious recipient of film festival awards and an audible voice for UNESCO, Cardinale remains as engaged as ever “I like to work with young directors in their first movie,” she said, ”it’s very important”.

The Essential Claudia Cardinale

Rocco and his Brothers (1960), director Luchino Visconti

Girl with a Suitcase (1961), director Valerio Zurlini

Cartouche (1962), director Philippe de Broca

The Leopard (1963), director Luchino Visconti

8 1/2 (1963), director Federico Fellini

The Pink Panther (1963), director Blake Edwards

The Professionals (1966), director Richard Brooks

Once Upon A Time In The West (1968), director Sergio Leone

Fitzcarraldo (1982), director Werner Herzog

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