Sixties screen siren Claudia Cardinale, who died on Tuesday aged 87, entranced audiences across the globe with the sultry gaze that made her the muse of Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini.

With her fierce beauty and husky voice, Cardinale not only captivated Italy's greatest filmmakers, she played opposite most of the leading men of the time, from Burt Lancaster to Alain Delon and Henry Fonda.

She died aged 87 at Nemours near Paris, in the presence of her children, her agent told AFP.

"She leaves us the legacy of a free and inspired woman both as a woman and as an artiste," Laurent Savry said in a message.

What would turn into a fairytale career began as a nightmare.

She was raped in her teens by a film producer and became pregnant. With few options open at the time, she made the tough decision to bring up her son Patrick and try "to earn a living and her independence" 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,........

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