RIP Claudia Cardinale

 

RIP Claudia Cardinale - Claudia Cardinale, whose performances graced such Italian cinematic masterpieces as Federico Fellini’s “8 ½”, Luchino Visconti’s “The Leopard” and Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West”, died Nemours, near Paris, France. She was 87. Cardinale was born in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, on April 15, 1938. With more than 130 feature credits and a handful of theatrical roles in her name, she worked steadily from her debut in her early 20s until her death. She won three David di Donatello Awards — Italy’s equivalent of the Oscar — for best actress and received an honorary Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival in 1993. In 2008, Cardinale was awarded a Legion of Honor in her adopted home of France, where she resided in the final decades of her life. Cardinale’s most memorable English-language role, however, came in a film directed by a fellow Italian named Sergio Leone: Playing a former prostitute and frontier widow who fights to protect her land against a ruthless railroad company in the epic spaghetti Western “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968), Cardinale gave a fiery performance for Leone that included a sadistic love scene with Henry Fonda. Cardinale appeared three Euro-westerns: “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) as Jill McBain, “The Legend of Frenchie King (1971) as Marie Sarrazin with Brigitte Bardot and “Twice Upon a Time in the West” in 2015 as Claudia.