Sixties screen siren Claudia Cardinale talks to Steve Rose about entrancing Fellini, spurning Brando – and why appearing in 135 films still isn't enough
There's nothing Claudia Cardinale hates more than staying still, but for the past two months she's had to do exactly that. She broke her foot on holiday in Tunisia and has since been holed up in her Paris flat. "It was stupid," she says, in her distinctive Mediterranean rasp. "I was playing volleyball. There was water on the edge of swimming pool, and I slipped. I like to be active, so when I have to sit for two months without going out, it's terrible. I had many places to go and I had to refuse: Venice, Kiev, Osaka. Now it's OK. Yesterday I went out for the first time, but the weather is ugly."
Cardinale is a survivor from the era when movie giants walked the earth – most of them alongside her. She was closing down those degrees of separation when Kevin Bacon was still in short trousers. But where former co-stars like John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, Marcello Mastroianni and Brigitte Bardot are all retired or deceased, Cardinale is still walking, volleyball accidents aside. Now 74, she has made over 135 films in the past 60 years, and still does two or three a year. Added to which, her part in classics like 8½, The Leopard, Once Upon a Time in The West and Fitzcarraldo keep her busy on the festival and "lifetime achievement award" carousel.
"I don't want to stop!" she laughs. "This is fantastic, to continue to work. It's important." Why does she keep going? She laughs again. "I don't know."
Thanks to her longevity, Cardinale is now a database of golden-age movie gossip. John Wayne and Rita Hayworth? "He was so big, and she was so beautiful. Gilda for me was the best. She was my mother, and he was my father [in 1964's Circus World]. Can you imagine?" The Pink Panther? "Peter Sellers didn't speak to anybody. Always in the corner, just the opposite of what you see in the film. Blake [Edwards, director] was fantastic. Crazy. And I love crazy people." I mention Tony Curtis, her co-star in California comedy Don't Make Waves. "Ah! Incredible. When was that?" We are speaking by phone, and I can hear something being shuffled. "I have lots of papers with everything written," she says. "Otherwise, I don't remember dates." Shuffle shuffle. "Ah, si, oui. It was just before Once Upon a Time in the West. Oh yes, 1968. We shoot, oh my God, long time. I don't remember!"
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