She was born in Tunisia to Italian parents. It was a French colony during the war, so she was fluent in two languages, which later came in handy. She had an odd deeper, raspy voice for a girl. He annoyed her father so much that she was only allowed to speak in his presence on rare occasions!
She was later overdubbed in many (especially the first) films, before it was realized that her masked voice was essentially alluring and sexy, and she owed her popularity to it as well. And of course the appearance, she had brown skin, “cat” eyes and an exhibition figure.
She had a rather complicated childhood, her mother and father were strict and demanding. If their children – she had a sister and two brothers – did something, they were severely punished. And since Claudia was the oldest, she tried to dictate to her siblings a little.
She acted like a boy, they called her Claude. When her classmates tried to bully her in the church school, they questioned her badly, she didn’t go far to get hit. She also got into trouble with teachers because of the fights. Despite her rebelliousness, she adapted to a conservative upbringing, did not wear make-up, wore black clothes with a scarf on her head.
Understandably, she was strictly celibate. But even the nun’s clothing could not hide her beauty. She didn’t even think about using her as a model or actress, she wanted to be a teacher and at the same time a missionary, to travel to the African continent to teach underprivileged children. But at fourteen, fate knocked on her window.
The school was visited by the French director René Vautier, who was looking for suitable types for the documentary film “Golden Circles” about Tunisian sailors. Young Arab women were supposed to play in it, but their parents forbade them because it is against Islam, so he chose Claudia.
Even though she only flashed on screen for a moment, the shot of a gust of wind blowing her veil off her face and mesmerizing black eyes looking into the camera was unforgettable. The film won at the Berlin Film Festival, where the audience and the jury were thrilled by the unknown beauty. She also caught the attention of Omar Shariff.
The he drove to get her to offer her a role in the movie Goha, but she mistook him for a spy and ran away from him! When everything was explained, the father intervened for a change, for him, Sicilana, the film was a hotbed of vice and forbade her to appear in it. But she ended up playing the role later.
When she was seventeen, an event happened that had a significant impact on her life. She noticed that an unknown young man was still following her, which scared her. She only calmed down thanks to a friend who knew him and offered to introduce them. It made her trust him. That was a mistake, he took her outside the city where he raped her.
It’s hard to say how the forced sex took place, because she continued to be intimate with him, which is quite unusual for victims of sexual violence – except, perhaps, for masochists, which she was not. However, it is a fact that girls have a strong relationship with their first boy. Whether he could have been strong enough for her to keep looking for him is a question, but apparently so.
She got into acting in a very strange way. In the competition for the most beautiful Italian woman in Tunisia, she sold raffle tickets. At the same time, the jury could not fail to notice her beauty. Despite the protests of the finalists, who almost insulted her, she was pushed onto the podium and crowned on the spot.
One of the prizes in the competition was a trip to the film festival in Venice. The world of the silver screen enchanted her for the first time, after which she began studying acting at a film school in Rome. The above-mentioned rapist also came to see her there, and they had sex again, which ended in pregnancy.
That didn’t fit her in the shop, because she already had her first film in the works Confused doesn’t apply but she resolutely refused to have an abortion. Then the producer Franco Cristaldi intervened in her life, who estimated her potential and offered her help.
By the third month she was wearing a corset and by the seventh she had shot all the scenes in which her body was not visible from the front. Then she withdrew into seclusion. She secretly gave birth to a son, Patrizio, in London. But that started impersonating her mother, Yolanda.
Cristaldi prepared a contract for her, which she signed without thinking. She was advantageous in appearance, she got many good roles, but at the same time she became his “slave.” He checked her weight daily, she was not allowed to gain or lose weight, change her hairstyle, the way she dresses and make-up, get pregnant, he controlled her monthly cycle and when she menstruated, she had to prove it to him .
He supervised her food, if she ate more than he allowed her to starve the next day. He had an overview of her every move, his secretary and personal driver sent him daily reports. They never lived together, even though Cristaldi wanted to. Claudia countered that it wasn’t in the contract, which he had to reluctantly agree to.
It is not known how he felt about sex, but if he had forced her to have sex, it would probably have failed sooner or later, and another pregnancy could have occurred, as she fundamentally refused contraception. Perhaps instead of intercourse he was satisfied by the perverted superiority, the power he had over her, which strongly smacked of sadism. He was undeniably a psychopath.
In the meantime, they secretly married, she did not find the courage to refuse him, although she was otherwise brave, she always shot the dangerous scenes in her films alone, especially in Cartouche, where her partner was Jean Paul Belmondo, who also refused stuntmen. On the contrary, she asserted that she would never play naked.
The toxic relationship lasted fifteen years, for which there was a written contract. But two years before, she fell in love with the young director Pasquale Squitieri. Cristaldi flew into a rage and threatened to kill himself – he even cut his own veins, but of course it was comedy.
He tried to destroy her career, but she was already such a star that he failed, she had a famous success in the western Once Upon a Time in the West alongside Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson. It is interesting that she accepted the role without reading the script, she was so impressed by Enzo Morricone’s incidental music.
Although it was more of a flop in Hollywood, the film aroused great enthusiasm in Europe. When Cristaldi failed with Claudia, he at least tried to harm Pasquale, as a producer he had a big say. However, he was so good that he also failed.
Three years later, Claudia gave birth to a baby girl, whom she named after herself. A few months earlier she had also become a grandmother, Patrizio, her son, had a daughter named Lucile. Even though Claudia tried to hide him with her powers, she failed, the journalists sniffed him out even before he was a teenager.
He blamed her for the solution she decided on, it was not easy for him to find out that the sister was his mother and the mother was his grandmother. But eventually they reconciled. She lived with Squitieri for over thirty years before he caught the second sap and left her for the young singer Ottavia Fusco. He died six years ago, since then she has been living alone. As one of the few actresses, she has not had a single plastic surgery. Even at the age of 86, she is active, works on various projects, is involved in charity, does not dwell on memories of the past, concentrates on the future and hopes that many more experiences await her.
Source: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001012/
https://francouzskyfilm.cz/claudia-cardinale/
https://www.showbiz.cz/lide/claudia-cardinale/
