Claudia Cardinale, the secret creature

This is the story of a young girl who did not want to make a film and who became a myth of the 7th art. It is the story of an intimate and violent secret that shaped his dazzling career. It’s the story of Claudia Cardinale. It is worthy of a novel.

Beautiful, very beautiful, it shone under the sun of the 1960s, adored by the general public and film lovers alike. She was Alain Delon’s cheeky lover in Le Guépard and the torrid heroine of Il était une fois dans l’Ouest. Fellini and de Visconti made it their muse, and they compared it to Brigitte Bardot. Yet who, during that glorious decade, really knew Claudia Cardinale? Who knew his smile would mask his tears? Who knew she acted more often in life than on screen?
The fate of this young Italian woman from Tunisia is worthy of a novel. Nothing, except her natural beauty, predisposed the young Claudia Cardinale to become an international film star. In Tunis, she lived in a traditional family where the young girls were destined to become wise wives rather than to get lost in desires for glory. With her broken voice and her manners as a tomboy, Claudia herself did not imagine herself as an actress.
When Italian producers spotted her at random in a beauty contest, she began by fiercely refusing all their proposals. She didn’t want to go to the movies. Until the day she was forced to do so, violently pushed by an intimate secret. A secret that pursued her during her dazzling ascent. A secret that led her to hide her life as a woman while she exposed herself in her actress clothes to the lights of fame….