Claudia Cardinale

Elected the most beautiful Italian in Tunis, Claudia Cardinale won a trip to Venice at the age of seventeen during the film festival. There, she receives proposals from many producers, but refuses to make films because she wants to be a teacher. She eventually gave in and got her first role in 1956 in a short film by Rene Vautier, Anneaux d'or. It was in 1958 that she appeared on the big screen in Le Pigeon. She then turns for Mauro Bolognini in Le Bel Antonio and for Luchino Visconti for Rocco and his brothers, with whom she will collaborate again for Le Guépard and Violence et Passion.

In 1961, she was really noticed by the French public with Cartouche alongside Jean-Paul Belmondo (which she found again in La Scoumoune in 1972). The same year, she toured with Henri Verneuil in The Lions are released (before finding it again in 1991 for Mayrig and 588, rue Paradis). From then on, the status of the artist only increased over the years.



The international success of The Pink Panther in 1963 brought her to the fore. She then collaborated with the greatest: Federico Fellini (Eight and a half in 1963), Henry Hathaway (The World's Greatest Circus in 1964), or even Richard Brooks (The Professionals in 1966) and Sergio Leone (Once upon a time in West, two years later). In 1971, she starred in Les Pétroleuses alongside Brigitte Bardot. At the end of the 1970s, Claudia Cardinale alternated filming in Italy (many of which were directed by her husband, producer Pasquale Squitieri) and major international productions.

The 80s confirmed his status as a world star. In La Peau (1981), she finds an old acquaintance she met in Eight and a Half: Marcello Mastroianni. The following year, she played in Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo as well as in The Ruffian (1982), an adventure film with Lino Ventura. The prestige of the actress continues to be confirmed with a tribute from the French Cinémathèque and the official presentation of the medal of Commander of Arts and Letters in 1992, as well as a Golden Lion for her entire career at Venice the following year.

Towards the end of the 90s, Claudia Cardinale turns less but does not abandon the cinema. She thus accepts to play in And now, Ladies and Gentlemen by Claude Lelouch. In 2002, she received a second tribute for her entire career at the Berlin Festival. Since then, his appearances on the screen have become rarer. After Aline Issermann's comedy Seeking fiancé all expenses paid alongside Alexandra Lamy and Bruno Salomone in 2007, we find her in 2010 in Le Fil, a drama by Mehdi Ben Attia which allows her to return to the country of her childhood: Tunisia. She embodies a bourgeois Catholic married to a Muslim in the 1960s.

After these few roles, Claudia Cardinale finds a new filming rhythm: she plays Jean Dujardin's mother in the drama Un balcon sur la mer (2010) directed by Nicole Garcia. Always looking for new collaborations despite her long career, she meets two other legends of cinema by giving the answer to Michael Lonsdale and Jeanne Moreau in the centenary film Manoel de Oliveira, Gebo and the shadow (2012). From film to film, the actress likes to travel through the ages. In The Artist and his Model, it is that of occupied France in the 1940s that she finds again, in particular alongside Jean Rochefort.