Gianni Cavina

Italian actor and writer Gianni Cavina is best known for his remarkable long-standing collaboration with the greatly respected director Pupi Avati. A native of Bologna, Cavina got his first acting break as a player at the Teatro Stabile di Bologna, run by classical actor Franco Parenti, and moved on to become a film actor in the late 1960s with Raffaele Andreassi's war drama "Flashback." The following year, Cavina acted in the first two films by director Pupi Avati, the fantasy horror films "Thomas and the Bewitched" and "Balsamus l'uomo di Satana." Cavina became firm friends with Avati, two years his senior and also from Bologna, and discovered they shared a very similar cinematic sensibility. At Avati's request, Cavina began writing screenplays, and through the second half of the 1970s Cavina co-wrote five films with his partner, most notably the 1976 comedy musical "House of Pleasure for Women" and the 1977 mystery horror film "The House of the Laughing Windows," plus two TV mini-series. At the latest count, Cavina and Avati have teamed up, in one capacity or another, 19 times over the course of five decades, with their more recent collaborations being comedies in which Cavina has played principal roles. Away from his work with Avati, Cavina's most notable credits include the 1976 comedy "The Big Operator," starring Yves Montand; Luigi Comencini's 1979 drama "Traffic Jam," in which Marcello Mastroianni and Gérard Depardieu led an all-star cast; and Marco Bellocchio's 2006 mystery "The Wedding Director."