The smouldering star of Once Upon a Time in the West, 8½ and The Leopard had her best roles for Italian directors• Claudia Cardinale, star of The Leopard, dies aged 87• Claudia Cardinale: a life in picturesClaudia Cardinale was part of the great wave of Italian movie stars whose postwar career took them from Europe to Hollywood; these included Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and Monica Vitti, who the American film industry prized not merely for their beauty but also for their mystery: an exotic feline allure and sense of toughness and survival, and even tragedy. But Cardinale perhaps had something her contemporaries didn’t: a kind of simplicity and frankness to go with the sensual allure. She often played opposite Alain Delon, whose own beauty complemented – almost merged with – hers.In Visconti’s early masterpiece Rocco and His Brothers from 1960, Cardinale played Ginetta, engaged to one of Rocco’s brothers from the uncouth south and her parents are openly hostile when their son-in...