Claudia Cardinale: The Beauty of Being 80 Years Old

– The present is the theatre with a tribute to 'his' Pasquale Squitieri, the future does not exclude cinema, "even if it is easier to do it in the USA and France than in Italy". Claudia Cardinale, who will turn 80 next Sunday, does not give up the wild and nonconformist nature that in the golden years of Italian cinema made her a muse for the greatest directors of the time, from Visconti to Fellini, from Germi to Leone. “I have never hidden my age, I have never been and never will be a diva. I am a normal woman, like all the others", she claims while meeting the press at the San Carlo theatre in Naples where next Sunday she will be celebrated in conjunction with the premiere of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. The current event is his commitment to the Augusteo theatre in Naples where he is on stage with Ottavia Fusco in 'The Odd Couple', Neil Simon's comedy adapted according to an idea by Pasquale Squitieri with two women protagonists instead of the two men of the original version: "It's a project that Pasquale cared a lot about - he explains - we're doing it in his honour". The rest is a dive into memories. From the beginning, against her will (“I didn’t want to do cinema, it was an accident, they named me the most beautiful Italian in Tunis without me having entered the competition”), to the first time in Venice (“I took the plane with my parents and there were posters that said here is the girl who said no to cinema”). And then the traumatic impact with the Experimental Center: “I slammed the door and was promoted because of my temperament”. And the resounding success with 'I soliti ignoti' and 'Otto e mezzo', 'The Leopard' and 'Il bell'Antonio'. Many memories linked to his companions on the set. From Alain Delon (“when we finished shooting there was a queue of men and women to go to bed with him”) to Marcello Mastroianni, whose intentions she never took seriously: “I never fell for it. And then I loved only one man, Pasquale Squitieri, the man of my life." From David Niven (“When I went to Hollywood he paid me a great compliment, he said I was the greatest Italian invention after spaghetti”) and Sergio Leone (“In Once Upon a Time in the West I was the only woman on the set and even today taxi drivers when they see me imitate the harmonica played by Charles Bronson”) to Alberto Sordi: “I had a lot of fun with him in Australia filming ‘Bello onesto emigrato Australia smarrebbe compaesana illibata’, where I – she recalls bursting into laughter – was not innocent but a whore. He didn’t want strangers in the house, only I was allowed.” It was the time when CC was opposite to BB's French beauty, Brigitte Bardot: "We were the brunette and the blonde, but we were very close on the set of 'Les Pistoleres'". The love for Squitieri is transmitted to the city of Naples: “It's a city that I love, like its music and its food. I was forced to move to Paris because in Rome I always had paparazzi outside my house. It had become unlivable, I moved house three times”, he says while joking with the photographers miming the gun gesture before returning to the theatre, a love discovered late. “Because before I was afraid to do it, now I'm not anymore.”