Acclaimed Italian actress Claudia Cardinale has died at the age of 87. She starred in some of the most celebrated European films and made-for-television productions of the 1960s and 1970s, and was best known for her role in Federico Fellini's 8½, in which she co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni in 1963. Cardinale also won praise for her role as Angelica Sedara in Luchino Visconti's award-winning screen adaptation of the historical novel The Leopard that same year, and a reformed prostitute in Sergio Leone's spaghetti western Once Upon a Time in the West in 1968. Cardinale began her film career at the age of 17 after winning a beauty contest in her birth country, Tunisia, where she was born to Sicilian parents who had emigrated there. The contest brought her to the Venice Film Festival, where she came to the attention of the Italian movie industry. "The fact I'm making movies is just an accident," Cardinale recalled while accepting a lifetime achievement award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2002. "When they asked me, 'Do you want to be in the movies?' I said no, and they insisted for six months." Her success came in the wake of Sophia Loren's international stardom, and she was touted as Italy's answer to Brigitte Bardot. Cardinale died in Nemours, France, surrounded by her children, her agent Laurent Savry told AFP.