1 of 4 | Claudia Cardinale seen in May 2007 arrived at the Palais des Festivals for the gala screening of “Chacun Son Cinema” at the 60th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France. She died Tuesday in France surrounded by her two children. File Photo by Christine Chew. | License Photo
Famed Italian actress and UNESCO goodwill ambassador Claudia Cardinale died this week surrounded by family three short years of her 90th birthday.
She died Tuesday in France at Nemours in the presence of her children, according to Cardinale’s agent Laurent Savry.
No cause of death was given.
Savry added she “leaves us the legacy of a free and inspired woman both as a woman and as an artist.”
Cardinale, born April 1938 in Tunisia at the very tip of north Africa to Sicilian parents, by age 16 won her first beauty contest and was later declared the “most beautiful woman” in Tunisia’s capital city Tunis.
Her beauty victory led to a Venice film festival trip that put Cardinale front-and-center with film producers and directors.
Originally with dreams to be a teacher, her father said years later, Cardinale later gave that up “give this cinema thing a go.”
Her career spanned through the 1950s and 1960s in such films as Goha, The Leopard, Girl with a Suitcase, The Pink Panther and 81/2.
She gave birth to her first child in secret abroad in London at the behest of a mentor after learning of her pregnancy during a filming.
Cardinale later told a French news outlet in 2017 that she referred to her son, Patrick, as her younger brother because she wanted to “earn a living and be independent.”
But unlike many of her counterparts she largely left Hollywood behind before 1970 to star mostly in European films.
Later awarded in 1999 with France’s highest honor, in the past Cardinale opened up about her purported fake relationship with Hollywood star Rock Hudson to reportedly keep hidden his true sexuality.
In 2017 she told Variety that “at that time in America if it was known that you were gay you could not work in Hollywood.”
Cardinale is survived by her eldest son, Patrick Cristaldi, and her daughter writer Claudia Squitieri.
Notable deaths of 2025
Robert RedfordHollywood legend Robert Redford (L) and his wife Sibylle Szaggars arrive on the red carpet before the screening of the film “All Is Lost” during the 66th annual Cannes International Film Festival in France on May 22, 2013. Redford, an actor, filmmaker and environmentalist who started the Sun Dance Film Festival and who starred in films such as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” died at the age of 89 on September 16. Photo by David Silpa/UPI | License Photo
