Fabio Testi was born on 2 August 1941 in
Peschiera del Garda on the
Lake Garda in Northern Italy. A number of adventure and pirate films were shot at this lake which led him to enter the sets of these films originally as a stuntman and as a double. He initially took these roles in film and television work as a way of paying for his architecture degree, but later chose to enter film work. Among early work, Testi was a stunt double in
Sergio Leone's
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. He also played in Leone's follow-up as one of
Henry Fonda's henchmen. Most of Testi's role in the film was cut except for one shot, as Leone felt that Testi was too clean-looking for the film.
Demofilo Fidani gave Testi his first on-screen role in his film () Testi continued his career doing what film historian and critic Roberto Curti described as "low-grade genre" films including a
Zorro film
The Avenger, Zorro by
Rafael Romero Marchent, the thriller
Death Knocks Twice with
Anita Ekberg and singer
Dean Reed by
Harald Philipp, and more films by Fidani such as
One Damned Day at Dawn… Django Meets Sartana! where he played the role of Sartana. While director Fidani was scouting locations for the film
Jungle Master, he met
Vittorio De Sica who was also location scouting at the
Orto Botanico dell'Università di Roma "La Sapienza". Fidani recalled that the two directors spoke: De Sica was looking for a younger Latin actor but couldn't find anyone, and asked Fidani if he knew any. Fidani stated he knew an actor who "can't act to save his life, but with you as a guide ... you know, I never have enough time, I always go for the first take'" Fidani stated later that upon discovering that Testi had been cast by De Sica, he had made Testi cut his hair. Curti noted that Fidani had a "notorious habit of embellishing his own career and filmography" and that the story may not be true. Testi was cast in
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis which won De Sica an
Academy Award. Following the release of the film, Testi became a big box office name in Italy. He continued to do genre films as well as artistic films such as
Giuseppe Patroni Griffi's ''
'Tis Pity She's a Whore'', Denys de la Patelliere's
Le Tueur and
Claude Chabrol's
Nada and
Andrzej Zulawski's
That Most Important Thing: Love. In the 1970s, Testi also worked on several genre films, predominantly crime films such as
Pasquale Squitieri's
Gang War in Naples,
Sergio Sollima's
Blood in the Streets,
Tonino Valerii's
Go Gorilla Go and
Enzo G. Castellari's
The Big Racket. Testi also did work in
giallo films, such as
Massimo Dallamano's
What Have You Done to Solange? and
Alberto Negrin's
Red Rings of Fear. Testi also worked
Lucio Fulci on two of his films:
Four of the Apocalypse and
Contraband. Testi was cast in a role intended for
Maurizio Merli in
Stelvio Massi's
Speed Cross and . Testi fell out of popularity in film by the 1980s showing up in
Gianfranco Baldanello's thriller
The Uranium Conspiracy and
Silvio Amadio's drama . From the eighties onward, Testi predominantly worked in television, such as Castellari's mini-series
The Return of Sandokan where he replaced
Philippe Leroy as Yanez. Testi also began showing up in television
reality shows such as ''
L'isola dei famosi in 2003, the Spanish show El gran hermano'' in 2005. In the late 2000s, Testi entered politics, where he ran for mayor in
Verona. On 5 October 2024 he received the Nosferatu Award at
Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya in
Sitges, and on 10 October he received the Tabernas de Cine Award in the 14th Almeria Western Film Festival. ==Personal life==