Omer antonutti

Born on August 3, 1935, he became an industrial appraiser at a shipyard company, where he aspired to work all his life. But he had an inferiority complex, because in his hometown only dialect was spoken, so his Italian was not as perfect as that of the upper class. He thought he would improve the language if he acted in the theater, and he became so fascinated by acting that he eventually turned professional. Already at the age of twenty-seven, he enrolled in the Academy of Dramatic Art in Trieste, and managed to work with the best Italian stage directors of the moment, such as Luca Ronconi or Luigi Squarzina.

In cinema, he appeared briefly playing an army officer in the comedy The Pleasures of the Night , starring two greats of his country’s cinema, Vittorio Gassman and Gina Lollobrigida , and he was a communist militant in Year One , by Roberto Rossellini . He established himself playing a rigid father, who forces his son to leave school to work as a shepherd, in Padre Padrone , one of the great titles of Italian cinema. Those responsible for it, the Taviani brothers , relied on him for La noche de San Lorenzo , Good Morning Babilonia and Kaos, where Luigi Pirandello went .

Spanish cinema asked him to play a businessman murdered in a terrorist attack, in The truth about the Savolta case , by Antonio Drove . But he is remembered above all as the doctor and dowser Agustín Arenas, who arouses fascination in his youngest daughter, a very young Icíar Bollaín, in El sur , by Víctor Erice . In addition, he was under the command of Javier Rebollo in the Bay of Biscay , Carlos Saura , in El Dorado , where he was the conquistador Lope de Aguirre, Gracia Querejeta in Una estación de paso , and Pedro Olea inThe fencing master . “He was a tender, charming, friendly man,” recalls the latter director. “He was great on set and put so much dedication into the fencing scenes that he didn’t want his double, a professional shooter, to come out. In one scene, Assumpta Serna almost put out his eye.”

In Italy he is remembered as a prolific voice actor, and because he was the narrator in the original version of Life is Beautiful . In his last years he lavished himself on irregular European productions, and in series, especially Italian ones. He leaves Hammamet , by Gianni Amelio , a biopic of the Italian politician Bettino Craxi, pending the premiere, in which he acts as a supporting role. He was quite discreet regarding his private life.