Emerging from a modest background in Lecco, Lombardy, he later enrolled in the Piccolo Teatro acting school in Milan after stints as a painter, mechanic and sales agent. His screen debut came in 1957 as a mime on the RAI children’s program Zurli il mago del giovedì, followed by supporting parts in Pietro Germi’s The Facts of Murder and Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (1960). A major brea…
