Nino Manfredi

Saturnino "Nino" Manfredi (22 March 1921 – 4 June 2004) was an Italian actor, voice actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, comedian, singer, author, radio personality and television presenter.

He was one of the most prominent Italian actors in the commedia all'italiana genre. During his career he won several awards, including six David di Donatello awards, six Nastro d'Argento awards and the Prix de la première oeuvre (Best First Work Award) at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival for Between Miracles. Typically playing losers, marginalised, working-class characters yet "in possession of their dignity, morality, and underlying optimism", he was referred to as "one of the few truly complete actors in Italian cinema".

Life and career

Early life

Manfredi was born in Castro dei Volsci, Frosinone into a humble family of farmers. His father recruited in Public Safety, where he reached the rank of Maresciallo, and in the early 1930s, he was transferred to Rome, where Nino and his younger brother Dante spent their childhood in the popular neighborhood of San Giovanni. In 1937, he became seriously ill with bilateral pleurisy, and after a doctor gave him only three months to live, he remained several years hospitalized in a sanatorium; there he learned to play a banjo built by himself and he entered the musical band of the hospital. To please his family in October 1941, he enrolled at the university in the Faculty of Law, but already in the same year he showed an interest and a natural inclination for the stage, making his debut as a presenter and an actor in the theater of a parish in Rome.