Flavio Bucci

Italian actor Flavio Bucci has performed in more than seventy films and television shows since his appearance in 1971's "The Working Class Goes to Heaven," helmed by director Elio Petri. He trained at the School of the Teatro Stabile of Turin before undertaking his diverse and prolific career. Initially he appeared in numerous comedies, including "Property is No Longer a Theft" (1973), which marked his second collaboration with director Petri. Bucci went on to demonstrate he could also play the villain, evidenced by his brutal portrayal of a murderous, sadistic thug in 1975's "Last Stop on the Night Train" (also known as "Night Train Murders"). Bucci's breakthrough came in 1977, when he starred in a television biopic of the 20th century artist Antonio Ligabue, whose primitive but ferocious paintings some critics have labeled "naive art." Bucci reached a much larger audience in Italy through his performance as the wild, unstable Ligabue, and many other appearances on the small screen would follow. The subsequent decades saw Bucci embracing an astonishing number of roles in films and television programs that spanned multiple genres. International audiences, however, will likely remember Bucci best for his role as the blind pianist in giallo master Dario Argento's notorious 1977 bloodbath, "Suspiria." Flavio Bucci died of a heart attack on February 18, 2020.