Celi, Adolfo

(1922-1986)

   Actor. After graduating from the Rome Academy of Dramatic Art, Celi began his film career playing the kindly priest Don Pietro in Luigi Comencini's Proibito rubare (Stealing Forbidden, 1948, also known in the United States as Guaglib). He then moved to Brazil where, for many years, he directed the Teatro Brasiliero in Sao Paolo as well as producing and directing a number of films in Portuguese. Having returned to Europe in the early 1960s, he resumed what would become an international film career. He gave proof of his impressive versatility by playing characters as different as clergymen like Monseigneur Radini Tedeschi in Ermanno Olmi's portrait of Pope John XXIII, E venne un uomo (And There Came a Man, 1965) and Cardinal Giovanni de Medici in Carol Reed's The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), and utter villains like the sadistic commandant Battaglia in Mark Robson's Von Ryan's Express (1965) and the ruthless Emilio Largo in the James Bond film Thunderball (1965), all in the same year.

   After appearing as the evil Valmont in Mario Bava's Diabolik (Danger: Diabolik, 1967) and as King Boemondo in Mario Monicelli's Brancaleone alle crociate (Brancaleone at the Crusades, 1970), he gave a finely nuanced performance as Commissioner Rizzuto, the prison administrator in Marco Leto's La villeggiatura (Black Holiday, 1973). Although he appeared in a host of other films, he is probably best remembered in Italy for his incarnation of the irrepressible doctor turned prankster, Professor Sassaroli, in Monicelli's provocative comedy Amici miei (My Friends, 1975) and its two equally outrageous sequels, Amici miei atto II (My Friends Act II, 1982) and Amici miei atto III (My Friends Act III, 1985).

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira