Italian actor Claudia Cardinale, star of The Leopard, dead at 87

Acclaimed Italian actor Claudia Cardinale, who starred in some of the most celebrated European films of the 1960s and 1970s, has died, AFP reported Tuesday.She was 87.She starred in more than 100 films and made-for-television productions, but she was best known for embodying youthful purity in Federico Fellini’s “8½,” in which she co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni in 1963.Cardinale also won praise for her role as Angelica Sedara in Luchino Visconti’s award-winning screen adaption of the historical novel “The Leopard” that same year and a reformed prostitute in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western “Once Upon a Time in the West” in 1968.She died in Nemours, France, surrounded by her children, her agent Laurent Savry told AFP.

Savry and his agency did not immediately return emailed requests for comment from The Associated Press.Cardinale began her movie-career at the age of 17 after winning a beauty contest in Tunisia, where she was born of Sicilian parents who had emigrated to North Africa.The contest brought her to the Venice Film Festival, where she came to the attention of the Italian movie industry.Before entering the beauty contest she had expected to become a school teacher.“The fact I’m making movies is just an accident,” Cardinale recalled while accepting a lifetime achievement award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2002.

“When they asked me ‘do you want to be in the movies?’ I said no and they insisted for six months.”Her success came in the wake of Sophia Loren’s international stardom and she was touted as Italy’s answer to Brigitte Bardot.While never achieving the level of success of the French actor, she nonetheless was considered a star and worked with the leading directors in Europe and Hollywood.“They gave me everything,” Cardinale said.

“It’s marvelous to live so many lives.I’ve been living more than 150 lives, totally different women.”One of her earliest roles was as a black-clad Sicilian girl in the 1...