Franco Fabrizi (15 February 1916 – 18 October 1995) was an Italian actor.

Life and career

Son of a barber and a cinema cashier, Franco Fabrizi started his career as a model and an actor in fotoromanzi. Fabrizi also starred on several revues and stage works, then he debuted on the big screen with a supporting role in Chronicle of a Love (Cronaca di un amore) (1950), Michelangelo Antonioni's feature film debut. The role that made him known was as Fausto in Federico Fellini's I vitelloni; from then he was inextricably linked to the character of a full-time seducer, a young wastrel, a young not-so-young man who refuses to grow up, a character that he reprised, with different facets, in a great number of films. Past the 1950s, Fabrizi was mainly relegated to character roles in Italian, French and Spanish minor productions; he still appeared on several major works of Italian cinema, and one of his last great roles was in Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice. In 1993 he had a serious car accident. During his recovery, he was diagnosed with colon cancer, from which he died in 1995.

Selected filmography