Volkswacht Bodensee - Sixties screen siren Claudia Cardinale dies aged 87

With her fierce beauty and husky voice, Cardinale not only captivated Italy's greatest filmmakers, she played opposite most of the leading men of the time, from Burt Lancaster to Alain Delon and Henry Fonda.

She died at Nemours near Paris, in the presence of her children, her agent told AFP, adding that the date and place of her burial had not yet been fixed.

"She leaves us the legacy of a free and inspired woman both as a woman and as an artiste," Laurent Savry said in a message.

Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli called her "one of the greatest Italian actresses of all time" and said Cardinale embodied "Italian grace".

Cardinale's fairytale career 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.

"I did it for him, for Patrick, the child I wanted to keep despite the circumstances and the enormous scandal," she told French daily Le Monde in 2017.

"I was very young, shy, prudish, almost wild. And without the slightest wish to expose myself on the film sets."

- Reluctant actress -

Born in La Goulette, near Tunis, on 15 April 1938, to Sicilian parents, Cardinale's life had already been turned upside down at at the age of 16 when she was picked out of a crowd to win a beauty contest.

Crowned "The most beautiful Italian woman in Tunis", the prize was a trip to the Venice film festival where she immediately turned heads and reluctantly, turned her back on her plans to become a teacher.

"All the directors and producers wanted me to make films, and I said, 'No, I don't want to!' she said.

It was her father who eventually convinced her to "give this cinema thing a go".

As she started to land small film roles, she was raped. A mentor convinced her to secretly give birth in London and entrust the child to her family.

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.

- 'Fairytale' -

From then there was no looking back, as she became swept up into the golden age of Italian cinema, even though she knew "not a word" of the language, speaking only French, Arabic and her parents' Sicilian dialect.

At 20 "I became the heroine of a fairytale, the symbol of a country whose language I barely spoke," she wrote in her 2005 autobiography "My Stars."

Her voice had to be dubbed in Italian until she starred in Fellini's Oscar-winning "8 1/2" in 1963, when the star director insisted she use her own voice.

That year, aged 25, Cardinale filmed both Visconti's epic period drama "The Leopard" and Fellini's surrealist hit "8 1/2" at the same time.

"Visconti wanted me brunette with long hair. Fellini wanted me blonde," she said.

Critics called her the "embodiment of postwar European glamour", and she was was packaged as such, both on screen and off.

"It's almost like she had sexiness thrust upon her," Britain's The Guardian wrote in 2013.

Embraced by Hollywood, where she refused to settle, Cardinale had a huge hit with Blake Edwards' "The Pink Panther" with Peter Sellers, then Henry Hathaway's "Circus World" with Rita Hayworth and John Wayne.

"The best compliment I ever got was from actor David Niven while filming 'The Pink Panther'," Cardinale recalled.

He said: "Claudia, along with spaghetti, you're Italy's greatest invention."

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.

- 'Only love' -

Although desired by many, she said her "only love" was the blue-eye 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.

Her decades-long career has seen her star in 175 films and both the Venice and Berlin festivals awarded her honorary prizes.

In 2017 she featured on the official poster of the Cannes film festival amid an outcry that her thighs had been airbrushed to make the seem thinner.

A staunch defender of women's rights, she was named UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in 2000 in recognition of her commitment to the cause of women and girls.

"I've had a 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.

W.Huber--VB