Giancarlo Giannini first studied acting at the Academia Nazionale in Rome. His long association with director Lina Wertmuller dates back to the early 1960s when he acted in her play Two and Two Are No Longer Four. In the late 1960's, he appeared in supporting roles in Anzio and The Secret of Santa Vittoria, among others, before Wertmuller chose him for the lead in Love and Anarchy. He also starred in her first internationally acclaimed feature The Seduction of Mimi, playing an innocent stooge duped into an assassination plot. Giannini, by now the recipient of worldwide recognition, continued with Wertmuller in Swept Away…by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August as the sailor marooned on a desert island with haughty Mariangela Melato and in 1976's Seven Beauties, for which he earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Giannini's other films include Luchino Visconti's The Innocent, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Lili Marleen, Lina Wertmuller's A Night Full of Rain, Once Upon a Crime, New York Stories and the recent box office hit Hannibal.

Credit: filmbug.com