The Tunisian-born Cardinale was a reluctant star at first.

Claudia Cardinale, star of film classics 8 1/2, The Pink Panther, and Once Upon a Time in the West, dies at 87

The Tunisian-born Cardinale was a reluctant star at first.

By Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt is a writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2024. Her work has previously appeared on Yahoo and in American *Journalism Review* and *The Shreveport Times*.

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September 23, 2025 7:58 p.m. ET

Claudia Cardinale photographed in 1965. Credit:

Silver Screen Collection/Getty

Claudia Cardinale, the actress who graced the screen in more than one of the most celebrated movies in cinema history, including director Federico Fellini's *8 1/2* and Sergio Leone's *Once Upon a Time in the West* in the 1960s, died Tuesday near Paris, her agent, Laurent Savry, told the Agence France-Presse. She was 87.

** has reached out to a rep for the star.

Born in Tunisia, where her first language was French, Cardinale had never aspired to be an actress.

Claudia Cardinale attends the Cannes Film Festival in 1974.

Gilbert TOURTE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty

"If the birth of my little boy, following a rape, hadn't pushed me to get involved in cinema to earn a living and be independent. It was for him that I did it. For Patrick, this baby that I wanted to keep despite the circumstances and the enormous scandal that an out-of-wedlock birth could cause at the time," Cardinale said in a May 2017 interview with French newspaper *Le Monde*. "I was very young, fierce, modest, almost wild. And without the slightest desire to exhibit myself on film sets."

She recounted that, when she was 17, she was selected as "The Most Beautiful Italian in Tunis," even though she said she hadn't entered the competition.

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"The reward was a trip to the Venice Film Festival, where I went with my mother and where my bikini, on the Lido beach, attracted the attention of the directors, whom I immediately rejected," she recalled. "A newspaper even profiled me with the headline 'The girl who doesn't want to make films.' But the requests multiplied. My father started receiving loads of telegrams and finally said, 'Why not?' In the meantime, the tragedy that had occurred and the impending arrival of a baby — which I was keeping secret — convinced me to go for it."

By the late 1950s, she was booking parts in films, although her husky voice was often dubbed early on.

Cardinale made several notable films in the '60s, including not only* 8 1/2* and *Once Upon a Time in the West*, but also the Peter Sellers comedy *The Pink Panther *and the 1963 period drama *The Leopard*, which was directed by Luchino Visconti.

Claudia Cardinale in 1968's 'Once Upon a Time in the West'.

Silver Screen Collection/Getty

"I shot both films at the same time," she said of filming *8 1/2* and *The Leopard*. "Visconti, precise, meticulous as in the theater, spoke to me in French and wanted me to be a brunette with long hair. Fellini, messy and lacking a script, spoke to me in Italian and wanted me to be blonde with short hair. These are the two most important films of my life."

She continued working for six more decades, appearing in mostly foreign films but also projects including *Son of the Pink Panther* in 1993 and 2014's *Effie Gray*, with Emma Thompson and Dakota Fanning.**

At the 1993 Venice Film Festival, she was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival for her body of work, alongside fellow recipients Robert De Niro, Steven Spielberg, and Roman Polanski.**

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Source: “AOL Movies”