CLAUDIA CARDINALE, 1938 - 2025 Italian actor starred in '8½' and 'Leopard'

Acclaimed Italian actor Claudia Cardinale, who starred in some of the most celebrated European films of the 1960s and '70s, has died, AFP reported Tuesday. She was 87.

- BY VICTOR L. SIMPSON

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 “8 ½,” in which she costarred with Marcello Mastroianni in 1963.

Cardinale also won praise for her role as Angelica Sedara in Luchino Visconti’s award-winning screen adaptation 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 immigrated 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 schoolteacher.