Franco Nero

Francesco Clemente Giuseppe Sparanero (born 23 November 1941), known professionally as Franco Nero, is an Italian actor. His breakthrough role was as the title character in the Spaghetti Western film Django (1966), which made him a pop culture icon and launched an international career that includes over 200 leading and supporting roles in a wide variety of films and television productions. During the 1960s and 1970s, Nero was actively involved in many popular Italian "genre trends", including polizieschi, gialli, and Spaghetti Westerns. His best-known films include The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966), Camelot (1967), The Day of the Owl (1968), The Mercenary (1968), Battle of Neretva (1969), Tristana (1970), Compañeros (1970), Confessions of a Police Captain (1971), The Fifth Cord (1971), High Crime (1973), Street Law (1974), Keoma (1976), Hitch-Hike (1977), Force 10 from Navarone (1978), Enter the Ninja (1981), Die Hard 2 (1990), Letters to Juliet (2010), Cars 2 (2011), John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017), and The Pope's Exorcist (2023). Nero has had a long relationship with Vanessa Redgrave, which began during the filming of Camelot. With Redgrave, Nero starred in two films directed by Tinto Brass: Dropout (1970) and La Vacanza (1971). They were married in 2006, and are the parents of the actor Carlo Gabriel Nero (b.1969).