Fabio Testi

There's more to acting than just a pretty face, and Fabio Testi is living proof. Despite his good looks, the Italian performer had difficulty breaking into the business due to his thick regional accent, which was considered undesirable in mainstream Italian cinema. Determined to make his presence known, Testi found work as a stuntman, briefly appearing in Sergio Leone's classic spaghetti Western "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly." It was in the Western genre that Testi would get his first legitimate shot, impressing as the masked outlaw Zorro in the 1969 adaptation "El Zorro justiciero." However, it wasn't until Testi played Bruno Malnate, the handsome gentile of "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis," which won an Academy Award in 1970, that he became an internationally recognized personage. Instead of making the leap to Hollywood, though, Testi opted to shine in the Italian cinema that had once rejected him. He memorably teamed with genre maestro Lucio Fulci, appearing as the leads in both the archetypical spaghetti Western "Four of the Apocalypse" (1975) and the gory crime drama "Contraband" (1980). Testi's career then veered into television with the end of the Italian film boom during the 1980s. He achieved near ubiquity in the years to come, starring in TV series and reality shows (including local versions of "Survivor" and "Big Brother"), where his striking looks and charming demeanor further endeared him to his audience.