“La Cardinale” is one of Italy’s great film icons and enjoyed great success in film and television. Even at 86, things aren’t quiet for the eccentric diva.
The most beautiful Italian invention after spaghetti or the most beautiful Italian in Tunisia – the woman with the brilliant name has already been showered with countless compliments. Claudia Cardinale, born in the Maghreb and now at home in France, always felt like she was Italian – a southern Italian, mind you. The Mediterranean country also likes to adorn itself with the “irrepressible” cinema star, who, after an exciting film career, became an activist for women’s rights. Claudia Cardinale will be 86 years old on April 15th.
“La Cardinale”, as she is often called in Italy, looks back on an exhilarating career and an eventful life. Unlike many of her colleagues, she refuses to follow the path of reluctantly aging divas: she managed to age gracefully and proudly displays her distinctive face in all its naturalness with wrinkles and traces of life. To this day, she is still considered by many to be an icon and legend of Italian and
French film that other actresses had to measure themselves against for a long time.
The Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and the Golden Bear at the Berlinale are testament to her acting work. With age, Cardinale has become quiet, with the exception of a few productions. Unusually, you no longer see her there as a vamp and sex symbol, but rather as either a matriarch or grandmother. She most recently played supporting roles in the Netflix production “Rogue City” (2020) and the ambitious drama “The Island of Forgiveness” (2022), which deals with the life of a Tunisian of Italian descent.
How it all began
Cardinale has a strong connection to Tunisia. She was born in Tunis in 1938 as the daughter of Sicilian emigrants and grew up speaking three languages - French, Arabic and Sicilian. The film diva once described her childhood in the North African country as a “golden age” full of “magical moments”. People are proud in her old homeland: La Goulette, a suburb of Tunis where Cardinale was born, ceremoniously named a street after her in 2022 – she was there in person at the time.
Cardinale was successful in the productions of highly respected Italian film luminaries and achieved international fame with her roles. In Federico Fellini’s film drama “8 1/2” from 1963, she appears as a muse dressed in white and dancing between trees and achieved one of her first successes alongside Marcello Mastroianni.
The Italian became world famous with Luchino Visconti’s “The Leopard” (1963) alongside Alain Delon and Burt Lancaster and as Princess Dala in the crime comedy “The Pink Panther” (1963). Thanks in particular to Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western “Play Me the Song of Death” (1968), she secured her place in the triumvirate of Italian film divas of the 60s and 70s.
Claudia Cardinale, Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida
Cardinale’s name is mentioned in the same breath as the two other icons of Italian cinema, Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida. Lollobrigida died in January. “I am very sad about the death of Gina. She was a woman who was so full of energy and interests that it didn’t seem like she could disappear,” Cardinale said in an interview just days after her former colleague’s death of the “Corriere della Sera”.
