ROME — Claudia Cardinale, a glamorous symbol of post-war Italian cinema who enjoyed a long and varied acting career on film and in the theater, has died at age 87, according to AFP and other French media.

Raised in Tunisia to a family of Sicilian origin, Ms. Cardinale’s introduction to the movie world came in 1957 after she won a beauty contest in Tunis and was rewarded with a trip to the Venice film festival.

Her voice had to be dubbed for her first Italian screen roles because she had grown up in a family where Sicilian dialect was spoken and had been educated at a French-speaking school.

Her early career was also complicated by a secret pregnancy which she said was the result of an abusive relationship. She gave birth to a son, Patrick, in London in 1958 and passed him off as a younger brother for several years while he was brought up by her parents.

After a series of smaller roles, she shot to international fame in 1963 when she featured in Federico Fellini’s 8-1/2 while she also starred alongside Burt Lancaster in The Leopard in the same year.

Shooting two films at the same time brought complications, with Ms. Cardinale recalling that she had to have different hair colors for the two roles.

In an interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper in 2013, Ms. Cardinale contrasted the approaches of directors Fellini and Luchino Visconti, who directed The Leopard.

“He (Fellini) couldn’t shoot without noise. With Visconti, the opposite, like doing theater. We couldn’t say a word. Very serious,” she said.

Her growing profile opened the door to Hollywood productions and she appeared in the comedy caper The Pink Panther, directed by Blake Edwards, and Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In the West in 1968.

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Ms. Cardinale’s career took a hit in the 1970s, after she separated from film producer Franco Cristaldi to start a life-long relationship with filmmaker Pasquale Squitieri, with whom she had a daughter, also called Claudia.

Angry at being dumped for another man, Cristaldi asked friends and associates in the Italian cinema industry to ostracize Ms. Cardinale, resulting for example in Visconti turning her down for his last film, The Innocent (1976).

“It was a very delicate moment. I discovered I had no money in my bank account,” Ms. Cardinale said about the period.

Franco Zeffirelli eventually came to her rescue, casting her in the 1977 television mini-series Jesus of Nazareth. She then continued working with other European directors, including Werner Herzog and Marco Bellocchio.

The husky-voiced, chain-smoking Ms. Cardinale had a reputation as a fiercely independent, free-spirited woman, who once defied Vatican protocol by showing up for a meeting with Pope Paul VI in a miniskirt.

A 2022 book celebrating her life was called Claudia Cardinale. The Indomitable.

Based for much of the time in France, and friends with presidents Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, Ms. Cardinale turned to the theater around the turn of this century, winning plaudits for her appearances on the stage.

She carried on making films in a variety of European languages until late in her life, appearing in Swiss TV series Bulle in 2020.

Awarded a lifetime achievement at the Berlin Film Festival back in 2002, she said acting had been a great career.

“I’ve lived more than 150 lives, prostitute, saint, romantic, every kind of woman, and that is marvellous to have this opportunity to change yourself,” she said.

“I’ve worked with the most important directors. They gave me everything.” — Reuters

LOS ANGELES — Jimmy Kimmel returned to late-night television on Tuesday defending US political satire against “bullying” by the Trump administration, six days after his on-air comments about the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk led Walt Disney to suspend his show.

“It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man. I don’t think there’s anything funny about it,” Mr. Kimmel told his audience, his voice choking with emotion.

“Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what was obviously a deeply disturbed individual — that was really the opposite of the point I was trying to make,” he added.

Disney, parent company of the ABC network which airs Jimmy Kimmel Live!, halted production of his show on Sept. 17, two days after Mr. Kimmel said in his opening monologue that US President Donald Trump’s supporters were desperate to characterize Mr. Kirk’s accused assassin “as anything other than one of them” and accused them of trying to “score political points” from his killing.

Before Mr. Kimmel’s show aired on Tuesday, Mr. Trump wrote that he “can’t believe” ABC gave Mr. Kimmel back his show, and hinted at further action against the network.

“Why would they want someone back who does so poorly, who’s not funny, and who puts the Network in jeopardy by playing 99% positive Democrat GARBAGE,” Mr. Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social.

“He is yet another arm of the DNC (Democratic National Committee) and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major illegal Campaign Contribution. I think we’re going to test ABC out on this.”

The Trump administration and many of its supporters were enraged by Mr. Kimmel’s comments of last week, which occurred five days after Mr. Kirk, a close Trump ally and radio-podcast host, was shot dead while speaking on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. In response to Mr. Kimmel’s remarks, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman, Brendan Carr, threatened an investigation and urged television stations to drop Mr. Kimmel’s show or face possible fines and revocation of their broadcast licenses.

Disney’s decision to cut short Mr. Kimmel’s exile marked a high-profile act of defiance in the face of an escalating crackdown by Mr. Trump on his perceived media critics through litigation and regulatory threats from the FCC.

Even though Disney has now brought back Mr. Kimmel to ABC’s lineup in less than a week, the two largest television station groups of ABC local affiliates — Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair — were still boycotting his show.

Mr. Kimmel, a four-time Oscars host, said Mr. Trump was not just after comedians he disliked, but also journalists, saying of the Republican president: “He’s suing them, he’s bullying them.”

“I know that’s not as interesting as muzzling a comedian, but it’s so important to have a free press, and it is nuts we’re not paying more attention to it,” Mr. Kimmel said.

He also said he was “deeply” moved by the forgiveness expressed by Mr. Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, for her husband’s accused killer, a 22-year-old technical school student from Utah. — Reuters