Hollywood legend Cardinale is no more

Italian cinema’s brightest star Claudia Cardinale has died. She was 87. She died in Nemours, France, outside Paris, on Tuesday (September 23) local time.
According to the BBC and Reuters, the actress, who was born in the African country of Tunisia, had a long and varied career in European and Hollywood cinema.
“She died in Nemours, France, in front of her children,” Cardinale’s agent Laurent Savory told AFP.
Cardinale’s film career began in 1957 after winning a beauty contest in Tunis. As a prize for the winner, she attended the Venice Film Festival. In 1963, she achieved international fame by starring in Federico Fellini’s ‘Eight and a Half’ and Burt Lancaster’s ‘The Leopard’.
Her path to Hollywood was also brilliant and smooth. She appeared in Blake Edwards’ The Pink Panther and Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West.
Her career took a turn for the worse in the 1970s due to changes in her personal life. However, Franco Zeffirelli gave her a role in the television series Jesus of Nazareth (1977) and she continued to work with various European film directors.
Cardinale was independent and daring; she even appeared in a miniskirt to meet Pope Paul VI.
She has received numerous awards for her acting career, including the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2002.
In her words, “I’ve lived more than 150 lives – prostitutes, saints, romantics, all kinds of women, and it’s extraordinary to have the opportunity to transform my own life.”
Claudia Cardinale’s death has cast a shadow of mourning over the film and cultural world.