Fabled Italian film star Claudia Cardinale has been the muse of such filmmakers as Luchino Visconti. Over the past six decades, she’s worked with such master directors as Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone and Werner Herzog. But when she began her career as a teenager, Cardinale voice was considered too husky, so it was dubbed for her early films. There were other problems as well.

Though her parents were Italian, she was born and grew up in Tunisia, then a protectorate of France. “My first language was French,” Cardinale said. So when she tried to speak Italian, her strong French accent proved to be a distraction. In fact, it wasn’t until she made Federico Fellini’s Oscar-winning 1963 masterpiece “8 ½” that international audiences heard her unique throaty voice.