Claudia Cardinale

Claudia Cardinale was born to a Sicilian family in Tunisia and appeared with her classmates in a short film that was shown at the Berlin Film Festival. Something of a local celebrity, she was cast in a French film opposite a young Egyptian actor, Omar Sharif, before entering The Most Beautiful Girl in Tunisia beauty contest at the age of 17, the prize being a trip to the Venice Film Festival. After a brief, unsatisfactory period studying in Italy she decided to return home, but she discovered she was pregnant after an abusive relationship with an older man. Soon after, she accepted an offer from Italian producer Franco Cristaldi to join his production company.

In 1958, she played a key role alongside some of Italy's greatest stars—Marcello Mastroianni, Totò, Vittorio Gassman and Renato Salvatori—in Mario Monicelli's international hit comedy Big Deal on Madonna Street (I Soliti Ignoti). Her film career was then interrupted by the birth of her baby, for which Cristaldi sent her away to London for privacy; it remained a secret for the next seven years.

She made a number of films at the end of the '50s, including a British production Upstairs and Downstairs, starring Michael Craig, but the key to her development was Pietro Germi's The Facts Of Murder (Un Maledetto Imbroglio), for which she received a glowing review from Federico Fellini. In 1960 she starred opposite Mastroianni in Bell' Angelo, which won the top prize at the Locarno Film Festival. She worked for Abel Gance in Napoleon at Austerlitz and Luchino Visconti in Rocco and His Brothers, but made her greatest impact in Francesco Maselli's I Delfini (Silver Spoon Set).

In 1961 she made Girl with a Suitcase, La Viaccia, Les Lions Sont Lâchés and Auguste, and in the following year, having played opposite Belmondo in Cartouche, she became a star in France. 1963 was a special year for her, as she starred opposite Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon in Visconti's classic Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), with Mastroianni again, in Fellini's legendary 8½ and with David Niven in the international comedy The Pink Panther. Her 1964 releases included Henry Hathaway's Hollywood picture Circus World, opposite John Wayne and Rita Hayworth and she was soon being lauded as the most popular movie star in Italy.

A series of international productions followed, including The Professionals with Burt Lancaster, Don't Make Waves with Tony Curtis and Sergio Leone's epic Western, Once Upon a Time in the West. Since 1970, she has continued to flourish in international films, in titles ranging from Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo to Blake Edwards' Son of the Pink Panther.

She has received lifetime achievement awards from festivals in Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Armenia, Russia, Bulgaria, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

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