Claudia Cardinale (1938-2025), the disappearance of an icon

Born in Tunis in 1938 in an Italian family, Polyglot – She spoke both French, Italian and Tunisian – Claudia Cardinal had started his career at 20. In a flash, she imposed herself as one of the absolute stars of her generation, chaining filming with the greatest masters of the time.

She explodes first at Luchino Viscontiwhich offers him significant roles in Rocco and his brothersIn SandraIn Violence and passion and of course in The cheetah. Impossible to forget its radiance alongsideAlain Delon and Burt Lancasterwhere his sensuality competed with the tragic magnitude of the film.

Chez Federico FelliniIn Eight and a half, It literally becomes a muse, appearance of both seductive and unreal in the face of Marcello Mastroiannithe very incarnation of cinema as a waking dream. In the popular adventure register, she bursts the screen with Jean-Paul Belmondo In Cartouche (1963), overflowing with charm and energy.

Hollywood immediately notes it: Blake Edwards confides the role of Princess Dahla in him in The pink panther, facing David Niven et Peter Sellers. It will also return to the saga in 1993, alongside Roberto BenigniIn The son of the pink panther.

But maybe it’s Sergio Leone which offers him his most unforgettable role: that of Jill McBain, the prostitute who has become a wife and mother, confronted with the massacre of her family in Once upon a time in the west. Tragic figure, heroine of western and incarnation of an era, Claudia Cardinal Immortal images are accesses the pantheon.

Magnificent brunette full of sensuality and panache, she walked her elegant silhouette and her raw game in a host of international works signed Valerio Zurlini (The girl at the suitcase), Abel Gance (Austerlitz), Christian-jaque (Oil), Richard Brooks (Professionals), Marco Ferreri (The hearing), Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo), or Henri Verneuil (Mayrig), to name a few.

If her career slowed down from the 1980s, she continued to appear regularly, until Effie Gray (2014), written by Emma Thompsonalongside Dakota Fanning. His latest striking role.

Celebrated worldwide, she received a golden bear in Berlin in 2002, a golden lion for her entire career in Venice in 1993 and a special David in Italy in 1997.

De Tunis to Cinecitte, De Hollywood, Claudia Cardinal will have been much more than a star: an icon of elegance and freedom, whose burning gaze will remain forever engraved in the memory of cinema.