Tunisian born Claudia Cardinale has died at age 87. Her entry into film came after being chosen as the most beautiful girl in Tunisia, where her Sicilian parents were immigrants.
One of the Italian (in her case Sicilian) bombshells of the 1960s, Cardinale is famous for a series of well regarded Italian movies, but perhaps best known in the US (outside of film aficionados) for her unlikely role as the Mexican heroin in The Professionals and again as the heroin in Once Upon A Time In The West. 8 1/2 may be her best known Italian film.
She was married once, and had two children, the first of whom when she was a teenager and whom was the result of a rape. Her parents raised that child as her brother until her true mother was revealed to him when he was eight years old.
In addition to Sicilian and English, she spoke French.
Overshadowed in the US by Sophia Loren, she was known as "Italy's girlfriend".
