With her fierce beauty and husky voice, Cardinale was the muse of Italian filmmakers Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini.
She died in Nemours, near Paris, surrounded by her children, her agent told AFP, adding that the date and place of her burial had not been set yet.
Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli called Cardinale "one of the greatest Italian actresses of all time," noting that she embodied "Italian grace".
Cardinale's fairytale film career began as a nightmare.
She was raped in her teens by a film producer and became pregnant. With few viable options at the time, she made the tough decision to raise her son, Patrick, and try "to earn a living" from cinema, even though she never wanted to be in films.
"I did it for him, for Patrick, the child I wanted to keep despite the circumstances and the enormous scandal," she told French daily Le Monde in 2017.
"I was very young, shy, prudish, almost wild. And without the slightest wish to expose myself on the film sets," she added.
Reluctant actress
Born in La Goulette, near Tunis, on April 15th, 1938, to Sicilian parents, Cardinale's life was turned upside down at the age of 16, when she was picked out of a crowd as the winner of a local beauty contest.
Crowned the “most beautiful Italian woman in Tunis," the award earned her a trip to the Venice Film Festival, where she immediately turned heads.
"All the directors and producers wanted me to make films, and I said, 'No, I don't want to!'" she said.
It was her father who eventually convinced her to "give this cinema thing a go".
As she started to land small film roles, she was raped. A mentor convinced her to secretly give birth in London and entrust the child to her family.
Patrick would officially be her younger brother until she revealed the truth seven years later.
"I was forced to accept this lie to avoid a scandal and protect my career," she said.
'Fairytale'
There was no looking back from there, as Cardinale was swept up into the golden age of Italian cinema, even though she knew "not a word" of the language, speaking only French, Arabic and her parents' Sicilian dialect.
At the age of 20, "I became the heroine of a fairytale, the symbol of a country whose language I barely spoke," she wrote in her 2005 autobiography, My Stars.
Her voice had to be dubbed in Italian until she starred in Fellini's Oscar-winning 8 1/2 in 1963, when the director insisted she use her own voice.
That year, Cardinale also played a leading role in Visconti's epic period drama The Leopard.
"Visconti wanted me to be a brunette with long hair. Fellini wanted me blonde," she said.
Critics called her the "embodiment of postwar European glamour", and she was packaged as such, both on screen and off.
"It's almost like she had sexiness thrust upon her," The Guardian wrote in 2013.
Embraced by Hollywood, where she refused to settle, Cardinale had huge success with Blake Edwards' The Pink Panther and then with Henry Hathaway's Circus World, which also starred Rita Hayworth and John Wayne.
"The best compliment I ever got was from actor David Niven while filming The Pink Panther,” Cardinale recalled.
He said: "Claudia, along with spaghetti, you're Italy's greatest invention."
Refusing to have cosmetic surgery, she went on to perform into her 80s and starred in La Strana Coppia, a female version of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple.
'Only love'
Despite being desired by many, Cardinale said her "only love" was blue-eyed Neapolitan director Pasquale Squitieri, the father of her daughter, Claudia.
Her decades-long career has seen her star in 175 films and receive prizes at both the Venice and Berlin film festivals.
A staunch defender of women's rights, she was named UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in 2000 in recognition of her commitment to the cause of women and girls.
"I've had some luck. This job has given me a multitude of lives, and the possibility of putting my fame at the service of many causes," she said.
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