Claudia Cardinale, iconic Italian-Tunisian actress, dies at 87

Claudia Cardinale, the Tunisianborn Italian actress whose luminous presence helped define European cinema in the 1960s and beyond, died Tuesday in Nemours, France. She was 87. Her agent said she was surrounded by her children at the time of her death.

Cardinale rose from a chance discovery to international stardom, building a career that spanned more than half a century and, by some counts, nearly 130 films. She is best remembered for key roles in Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers and The Leopard, Federico Fellini’s 8½, and Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, where her portrayal of the widowed Jill McBain gave rare central agency to a woman in a spaghetti western. Her screen debut came in 1958 in Goha opposite Omar Sharif, and she later appeared in popular international fare including The Pink Panther, The Professionals and Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo.

Born in La Goulette near Tunis in 1938 to Sicilian parents, Cardinale came to the attention of the film world after winning a beauty contest in Tunisia as a teenager that brought her to the Venice Film Festival. She spoke French, Arabic and a Sicilian dialect before learning Italian as an adult, and early in her...