Gabriele Ferzetti

Gabriele Ferzetti (born Pasquale Ferzetti; 17 March 1925 – 2 December 2015) was an Italian actor with more than 160 credits across film, television, and stage. His career was at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s.

Ferzetti’s first leading role was in the film Lo Zappatore (1950). He portrayed Puccini twice in the films Puccini (1953) and Casa Ricordi (1954). He made his international breakthrough in Michelangelo Antonioni’s controversial L’Avventura (1960) as a restless playboy. After a series of romantic performances, he acquired a reputation in Italy as an elegant, debonair, and somewhat aristocratic looking leading man.

Ferzetti starred as Lot in John Huston’s biblical epic, The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966), and played railroad baron Morton in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Perhaps his best known role, internationally, was in the James Bond movie On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) as Marc Ange Draco, although his voice was dubbed by British actor David de Keyser. He was perhaps best known to non-mainstream audiences for his role as the psychiatrist, Hans, in Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter (1974). In the 1970s, he appeared in a significant number of crime films, often as an inspector.

He appeared in Julia and Julia, opposite Laurence Olivier in Inchon (1982), and the cult film, First Action Hero. Later in his career, he played the role of Nono in the TV series Une famille formidable, while also appearing in Luca Guadagnino’s 2009 film I Am Love.

Ferzetti died on 2 December 2015, aged 90.

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