The Italian actress Claudia Cardinale, who has died aged 87, spent her final years living a "humble" life in a small French town, far from the glamour of her Sixties silver screen heyday, her daughter has told AFP.
Cardinale, who appeared in films by some of Italy's greatest filmmakers as well as Hollywood classics, died on Tuesday in Nemours, an hour and a half's drive south of the French capital.
The passing of the star of Federico Fellini's Oscar-winning 8½, Luchino Visconti's The Leopard, Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, and the original 1963 The Pink Panther prompted tributes from French President Emmanuel Macron as well as his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella.
Cardinale, known for her beauty and husky voice, spent the latter stage of her life with her daughter at a former tannery in Nemours that she converted into an arts centre and Italian restaurant.
"I am very happy to have been able to share these past years with her, in the festive and vibrant life of this place with workshops, artists, guesthouses, a restaurant, friends," her daughter Claudia Squitieri told AFP in Nemours.
"She lived simply, humble, true to herself," she continued.
Local well-wishers dropped flowers at Cardinale's Le Picardeau restaurant on Wednesday, while the Venice and Cannes film festivals both paid tribute to her career.
"Claudia Cardinale embodied... a gaze, a talent that added so much to the works of the greatest, from Rome to Hollywood, and Paris, which she chose as her homeland," said Italian President Sergio Mattarella.
Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Frémaux called her an "adventurer, free and passionate" who "won our hearts from film to film".
Born in La Goulette, near Tunis, on 15 April 1938, to Sicilian parents, Cardinale won a local beauty contest, and the prize was a trip to the Venice Film Festival, where she met directors and producers.
Her career, however, began as a nightmare.
She was raped in her teens by a film producer and became pregnant.
With few options open at the time, she made the tough decision to bring up her son, Patrick, and try "to earn a living and her independence" from cinema, even though she never wanted to be in films.
Patrick would officially be her younger brother until she revealed the truth seven years later.
"I was forced to accept this lie to avoid a scandal and protect my career," she said.
Critics labelled Cardinale the "embodiment of postwar European glamour", and she was packaged as such, both on screen and off.
After working in Italy, she was embraced by Hollywood, where she had a huge hit with Blake Edwards's The Pink Panther with Peter Sellers, then Henry Hathaway's Circus World with Rita Hayworth and John Wayne.
Her decades-long career saw her star in 175 films.
Cardinale said her "only love" was the Neapolitan director Pasquale Squitieri, father to her daughter Claudia, with whom she worked on a series of films over four decades until his death in 2017.
Refusing to have cosmetic surgery, she went on to perform into her 80s, including in La Strana Coppia, a female version of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple at the Teatro Augusteo in Naples.
A staunch defender of women's rights, Cardinale was named UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in 2000 in recognition of her commitment to the cause of women and girls.
"I've had a lot of luck. This job has given me a multitude of lives, and the possibility of putting my fame at the service of many causes," she said.
Source: AFP
