Date of Birth : Aug 18th 1953
He began his theatrical career in Italian public theater with Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure at the Teatro di Roma and with roles in other plays in the great tradition of Italian comedy. Then he performed two sessions at the Teatro di Genova, taking on the roles of Tuzenbach in Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters and Jean in Strindberg’s Miss Julie, directed by the great Czech director Otomar Krejka.
His production of Piccoli Equivoci by the young Italian playwright Claudio Bigagli was a tremendous success at the Festival Dei Due Mondi in Spoleto. At that same festival, he experimented with bringing Peter Handke’s Infelicita Senza Desideri (Sorror Beyond Dreams) to the stage.
Castellitto made his debut in the cinema in 1982 playing alongside Marcello Mastroianni in L’Armata Ritorna (The General of the Dead Army), directed by Luciano Tovoli, which was followed by Magic Moments with Stefaring Sandrelli. He has also taken leading roles in some of the best films by young auteur directors such as Marco Colti (Giovanni Senza Pensteri) and Felice Fatina (Sembra Morto Ma El Solo Svenuto), for which Castellitto also served as the subject and screenwriter. In 1986, he acted with Vittorio Gassman and Fanny Ardant in the great saga La Famiglia (The Family) directed by Ettore Seola, who would go on to produce another movie with Castellitto and Mariangela Melato called Amore a Cinque Stelle. In France, he co-starred in 1987 with Alain Delon in Cinema and in Luc Besson’s cult movie Paura e Amore (Love and Fear). Starring in 1989, he played the leading role of the magistrate Dario De Santis in the TV serial Cane Sciolto for three years, resulting in great popularity and several prestigious Italian television awards. He also acted in Carlo Vanzina’s the Colonne in Cronaca in 1989. He played the main character Alberto in Arthur Joffe’s Alberto Express. In Italy he playied the role of the famous Italian musicman, Gioachino Rossini, in Mario Monicelli’s film Rossini Rossini and in the same year played the grotesque, leading role of La Carne directed by Marco Ferren.
CAREER
The Big Blue ( 1989 )
