Terence Hill

Biography

Terence Hill, born Mario Girotti in Venice on 29 March 1939, is an Italian actor, director and screenwriter best known for action and comedy films made between the 1960s and the 1980s. He started out as a child actor and later became one of the most popular faces in Italian cinema, above all through his long partnership with Bud Spencer.

The son of an Italian chemist and a German mother, he spent part of his childhood in Germany, in the small town of Lommatzsch, and lived through the bombing of Dresden. At the age of twelve he was spotted at a swimming meet by the filmmaker Dino Risi, who gave him a role in Vacation with a Gangster (1951). While studying classical literature at the University of Rome, he worked as a photo-romance model, a genre then very popular in Italy. His first substantial film role came in Luchino Visconti's The Leopard (1963), though his part was still modest.

His appearance made him a natural choice for Anglo-American characters in numerous Italian and German Westerns. When he made God Forgives... I Don't! in 1967, he was asked to adopt a more commercial English name, and he chose Terence Hill, an origin story that accounts differ on. That same year he married the American Lori Zwicklbauer. God Forgives... I Don't! paired him with Bud Spencer, and the two went on to make a long run of action comedies built around brawls. Their first major commercial success was They Call Me Trinity (1970), followed by a sequel that became the highest-grossing Italian film of its time. Together they made many comedies in which Hill typically played the cunning rogue to Spencer's gruff but good-natured brute.

Hill also worked alone, with films such as My Name Is Nobody (1973), opposite Henry Fonda, which he has named among his personal favourites. He moved to the United States in the 1970s and tried, without much luck, to build a career in English-language films. He then turned to directing, with Don Camillo (1983), and made Lucky Luke (1991), which led to a television series. On television he became hugely popular with Don Matteo, in which he played a priest who helps the police solve local crimes, a series that ran for two decades. In 2010 he and Spencer received the David di Donatello for their career.

His legacy rests on the popular success of his action comedies and on a long career that also made him a fixture of Italian television. His children Jess and Ross also worked in film, and Ross's death in 1990 deeply affected him.

Key films

• Hannibal (1959), in a supporting role opposite Victor Mature.
• The Leopard (1963), Luchino Visconti's epic, his first notable role in art-house cinema.
• God Forgives... I Don't! (1967), his breakout hit and the start of his partnership with Bud Spencer.
• They Call Me Trinity (1970), the first major commercial success of the pair.
• My Name Is Nobody (1973), opposite Henry Fonda, one of his most admired films.
• Crime Busters (1977), the action comedy with Spencer that kept their successful formula going.