Born in
Pieve di Teco, Pannofino's parents originated from
Locorotondo. Sometime after 1972, he and his family moved to
Rome. In 1978, while waiting for a bus to take him to university so that he could undergo an algebra exam, Pannofino heard the sound of gunshots coming from a street nearby: what he heard was in fact
Aldo Moro being kidnapped; he would later write a song based on those events,
Il sequestro di stato (i.e.
State abduction), which appears in the soundtrack of
Felice Farina's 2014 film
Patria featuring him in the main role. Pannofino began his career as a theatre actor at some point between the late 1970s and the early 1980s and as a screen actor during the mid-90s, appearing in many films and television series through the years; these include ''
Giovanni Falcone – L'uomo che sfidò Cosa Nostra, in which he portrayed real life gangster Tommaso Buscetta, and Night Bus, starring Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Valerio Mastandrea, as well as the TV film Imperium: Pompeii. He is especially known for the role of frustrated TV director René Ferretti in the satirical TV series Boris, also contributing to the soundtrack with his own song Ciak'' (Italian onomatopeia indicating the clapperboard used to demand action while filming). Pannofino is considered to be one of the most representative dubbers in the fifth generation of Italian voice actors and has dubbed a great number of characters into the Italian language. He is the official voice actor of
George Clooney and
Denzel Washington. Other actors he often or occasionally dubs include
Kurt Russell,
Wesley Snipes,
Mickey Rourke,
Dan Aykroyd,
Antonio Banderas,
Jean-Claude Van Damme,
Philip Seymour Hoffman,
Ray Winstone,
Michael Madsen,
Kiefer Sutherland,
Daniel Day-Lewis and
Kevin Spacey (the latter of which is mainly dubbed by
Roberto Pedicini). Pannofino performed the Italian voices of characters such as
Rubeus Hagrid (portrayed by
Robbie Coltrane) in the
Harry Potter franchise (which includes narrating the official audiobooks), the
Green Goblin (portrayed by
Willem Dafoe) in
Sam Raimi's
Spider-Man trilogy,
Gil Grissom (portrayed by
William Petersen) in
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Budd (portrayed by Michael Masden) in
Kill Bill: Volume 1 and
Kill Bill: Volume 2 and the
title character (portrayed by
Tom Hanks) in
Forrest Gump. In his animated roles, he performed the Italian voices of Papi in the
Beverly Hills Chihuahua film series, The Red Guy in
Cow and Chicken and
I Am Weasel, Lrrr in the first five seasons of
Futurama and many more. == Personal life ==