Background
Cardinale, Claudia was born on April 15, 1938 in Tunis, Tunisia. Daughter of Franco and Yolanda Cardinale.
Cardinale, Claudia was born on April 15, 1938 in Tunis, Tunisia. Daughter of Franco and Yolanda Cardinale.
She studied at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografica in Rome, Italy.
After Claudia had become known as the most beautiful Italian girl in Tunis, and played a small part in Goha (57, Jacques Baratier), he saw that she was worthy of more comprehensive titles and that, where BB had prospered, CC might do as well. She played in I Soliti Ignoti (58, Mario Monicelli) and came to England for Upstairs and Downstairs (58, Ralph Thomas).
Whereupon she had a string of parts in Italian films, often as a glamorous object but more thoughtfully used by Visconti, until she was taken up by Hollywood: La Prima Notte (59, Alberto Cavalcanti); Un Maledetto Imbroglio (59, Pietro Germi); I Bell’ Antonio (59, Mauro Bolognini); Austerlitz (59, Abel Gance and Roger Richebe); II Delfini (60, Francisco Maselli); La Ragazza con la Valigia (60, Valerio Zurlini); Rocco and Iiis Brothers (60, Luchino Visconti); La Viaccia (61, Bolognini); Cartouche (61, Philippe de Broca); Sénilité (62, Bolognini); 8/2 (63, Federico Fellini): PhiLeopard (63, Visconti); La Ragazza di Bube (63, Luigi Comencini); The Pink Panther (63, Blake Edwards); The Magnificent Showman (64, Henry Hathaway); Gli Indifferenti (64, Maselli); Blindfold (65, Philip Dunne); Of a Thousand Delights (65, Visconti); Lost Command (66, Mark Robson); The Professionals (66, Richard Brooks); in the “Fata Armenia” episode from Le Fate (66, Monicelli); Don't Make Waves (67, Alexander Mackendrick); Il Giorno della Civetta (67, Damiano Damiani); Once Upon a Time in the West (69, Sergio Leone); A Fine Pair (69, Maselli); The Adventures of Gerard (70, Jerzy Skolimowski); with Bardot in The Legend of Frenchie King (71, Christian-Jaque); The Red Tent (71, Mikhail Kalatozov); La Scoumoune (72, Jose Giovanni); II Giorno del Furore (73, Antonio Calenda); and Libera, Amore Mio (73, Bolognini).
Her sumptuousness will never quite be forgotten, nor that raucous voice that seems to belong to another face. Meanwhile, she has been in La Part du Feu (77, Etienne Perrier); Corleone (77, Pasquale Squitieri); L’Anna (78, Squitieri); La Petite Fille en Velours Bleu (78, Alan Bridges); Escape to Athens (79, George Pan Cosmatos); La Pelle (81, Liliana Cavani); The Salamander (81, Peter Zinner); Le Cadeau (81, Michel Lang); Fitzcarraldo (82, Werner Herzog); Le Ruffian (83, Giovanni); Princess Daisy (83, Waris Hussein) for TV; with Mastroianni in Enrico IV (83, Marco Bellocchio); L’Eté Prochain (85, Nadine Trintignant); La Donna delle Meraviglie (85, Alberto Bevilacque); La Storia (85, Luigi Comencini); Un Homme Amoureux (87, Diane Kurys); Blu Eletricco (88, Elfriede Gaeng); Hiver 54, l’Abbé Pierre (89, Denis Amar); La Revolution Française (89, Robert Enrico and Richard T. Heffron); The Son of the Pink Panther (93, Edwards); Elles Ne Pensent qu’à ça . . . (94, Charlotte Dubreuil); Nostromo (96, Alastair Reid); Riches, Belles, Etc. (98, Bunny Sehpolian- skv); Brigands (99, Squitieri); Elisabeth (99, Squitieri).
From beautv queen to international mosie star in seven years is a modern fairy story, and Cardinale is proof that if a woman has a luscious enough body, an attentive face, and some animation, then she can be the princess in that story. The fairs godfather in her case was producer Franco Cristaldi.
She was married to Cristaldi and later to Pasquale Squitieri.