The most beautiful Italian girl in Tunisia: Claudia Cardinale (1938-2025) | Tribute

When she was only 19 years old, Claudia Cardinale won a competition for the most beautiful Italian girl in Tunisia, and the film career that would follow over the next two decades would create millions of fans who agree with this award. The beauty of Cardinale helped make her a star, but it was her elusive charm and her mysterious nature in films like “The Leopard”, “8 ½”, “The Pink Panther”, “Once Upon a Time in the West”, and so many others that made it one of the most recognizable faces of “ 50 and ’60. She died in Nemours, in France this week, one of the rare remaining superstars of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

After having attracted the attention of Jacques Baratier thanks to his appearance in a short film which was presented in Berlin Film Festival, Cardinale was played in a minor role in its beginnings: “Goha” of 1958, directed by Baratier and with Omar Sharif. The film was created in competition in Cannes. At the end of the 1950s, Cardinale signed a seven -year contract with the gaps of the Italian production company, led by Franco Cristaldi, with whom Cardinale would in fact be married from 1966 to 1975.

Her breakthrough came in the 1958 comedy “Big Deal on Madonna Street”, which was a great success in Italy, and she worked regularly from this moment. The protruding facts of that time include “Il Bell’Antonio”, “Austerlitz”, “Rocco and his brothers”, “Silver Spoon set” and “Time of indifference”. Her career really took off in 1963, when she appeared both in “The Leopard” and “8 ½”, two of the most acclaimed Italian films of all time. “8 ½” actually marked the first time that Cardinal could use her own voice – she has always been nicknamed before that. In the 1960s, she was often considered the most popular film star in Italy, but she also became a notable presence in Hollywood, appearing opposite Rock Hudson in “Bandfold” and Anthony Quinn in “Lost Command”. One of his most timeless roles came in 1968 in the legendary of Sergio Leone “Once Upon a Time in the West”.

Much more than a pretty face, Claudia Cardinale worked almost constantly from its launch in the late 1950s until her death more than six decades later, appearing in an original French film from Netflix entitled “Rogue City” since 2020. She was a legend that has never underguised the work “Gebo and the fantasy” and “the artist and the model”. She worked by Fellini opposite Emma Thompson in “Effie Gray” of 2014, a link with the past of European cinema which has now been lost.

The death of Claudia Cardinale was an internationally recognized event this week. The French president Emmanel Macron wrote on X: “Claudia Cardinale embodied a freedom, a vision and a talent that have decisively contributed to the works of the greatest, from Rome to Hollywood, to Paris, which she chose like her homeland. We will always carry this Italian and global star in our hearts, for the eternity of cinema ”. An Italian point of sale named Ansa To a wonderful quote from the star on what was for her: “I lived the film profession, not to escape life but to live it better than I lived real life, at least with more sincerity and conscience”.