Venantino Venantini

Enrico Venantino Venantini (17 April 1930 – 9 October 2018) was an Italian actor. He is known internationally for his roles in several cult and exploitation films during the 1970s and 1980s, and was also a favorite of French director Georges Lautner. He won the Nastro d'Argento for Best Supporting Actor for The Dinner (1998).

Early life

Venantini was born in Fabriano in 1930. He won a scholarship to study at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in France. To finance his studies, he took extra roles in films like Ben-Hur (1959), and worked as a translator at the American embassy in Rome. He moved to what Paris with what little money had had, driving a Lambretta scooter.

Career

Venantini appeared in appeared in more than 190 films and television series. He made his debut in the cinema with an appearance in Un giorno in pretura under the direction of Steno and he had his first important role in Odissea Nuda (1961), directed by Franco Rossi.

He appeared in cult favorites such as Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye (1973), Black Emanuelle (1975), City of the Living Dead (1980), The New Barbarians (1983), The Adventures of Hercules (1985), and Final Justice (1985). He acted with actors such as Lino Ventura, Yves Montand, Alain Delon and Gérard Depardieu and for directors such as Ettore Scola, Luciano Salce and Dino Risi and for French film directors such as Gérard Oury and Claude Lelouch. He was a particular favorite of French director Georges Lautner, with whom he worked on 10 films.

In 2017, Venantini was the subject of a retrospective at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the national film school of Italy, which described him as "a multifaceted actor with a prolific and heterogeneous filmography".