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

Raised in Tunisia to a family of Sicilian origin, 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 Cardinale recalling that she had to have different hair colours for the two roles.

In an interview with Britain's Guardian newspaper in 2013, 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 theatre. 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. (Reuters)