She starred in more than 100 films and made-for-television productions, but she was best known for embodying youthful purity in Federico Fellini's 8½, in which she co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni in 1963.
Cardinale also won praise for her role as Angelica Sedara in Luchino Visconti's award-winning screen adaption of the historical novel The Leopard that same year and a reformed prostitute in Sergio Leone's spaghetti western Once Upon a Time in the West in 1968.
She died in Nemours, France, surrounded by her children, her agent Laurent Savry told AFP.
Cardinale began her movie-career at the age of 17 after winning a beauty contest in Tunisia, where she was born of Sicilian parents who had emigrated to North Africa.
The contest brought her to the Venice Film Festival, where she came to the attention of the Italian movie industry.
Before entering the beauty contest she had expected to become a school teacher.
"The fact I'm making movies is just an accident," Cardinale recalled while accepting a lifetime achievement award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2002.
"When they asked me 'do you want to be in the movies?' I said no and they insisted for six months."
Her success came in the wake of Sophia Loren's international stardom and she was touted as Italy's answer to Brigitte Bardot.
While never achieving the level of success of the French actress, she nonetheless was considered a star and worked with the leading directors in Europe and Hollywood.
"They gave me everything," Cardinale said.
"It's marvellous to live so many lives. I've been living more than 150 lives, totally different women."
One of her earliest roles was as a black-clad Sicilian girl in the 1958 comedy classic Big Deal on Madonna Street.
It was produced by Franco Cristaldi, who managed her early career and to whom she was married from 1966 to 1975.
The sensuous brunette with enormous eyes was often cast as a hot-blooded woman. As she had a deep voice and spoke Italian with a heavy French accent, her voice was dubbed in her early movies.
Her career in Hollywood brought only partial success because she was not interested in giving up European film.
Nonetheless, she achieved some fame by teaming with Rock Hudson in the 1965 comedy thriller Blindfold and another comedy Don't Make Waves with Tony Curtis two years later.
Cardinale herself considered the 1966 The Professionals, directed by Richard Brooks as the best of her Hollywood films, where she starred alongside Burt Lancaster, Jack Palance, Robert Ryan and Lee Marvin.
In a 2002 interview with the Guardian, she explained that the Hollywood studio "wanted me to sign a contract of exclusivity, and I refused. Because I'm a European actress and I was going there for movies".
Among her industry prizes was a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement that she received at the Venice film festival nearly 40 years after her initial appearance on screen.
In 2000, Cardinale was named a goodwill ambassador for the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for the defence of women's rights.
She had two children. One with Cristaldi and a second with her later companion, Italian director Pasquale Squitieri.
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