Remo Girone, who starred as a mob boss on the classic Italian mafia TV series La Piovra and portrayed Enzo Ferrari in James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari, has died. He was 76.
Girone battled bladder cancer and died Friday at his home in Monte Carlo, the newspaper La Repubblica reported.
American moviegoers also know the Italian actor for his turn as another mafia kingpin, Maso Pescatore, in the Ybor City-set period crime drama Live by Night (2016), written, directed and starring Ben Affleck. Later, he played a doctor who aids Denzel Washington’s Robert McCall in Altamonte, Italy, in The Equalizer 3 (2023).
Girone joined the realistic RAI drama La Piovra for its third of 10 seasons in 1987 as the crooked banker Gaetano “Tano” Cariddi, a character said to have been inspired by real-life mafioso Michele “The Shark” Sindona.
He was a regular in the seasons that aired in 1989, 1990, 1992 and 1995 before returning in 2001, as his cancer treatments had forced him to step away. (La Piovra translates to The Octopus, for the tentacles of organized crime that spread throughout the world.)
In Ford v Ferrari, Girone played the carmaker Enzo Ferrari as a man “dedicated to quality, prestige and class” who “presides over his empire like a cross between a medieval lord and a mafia boss and looks down on [Henry Ford II, portrayed by Tracy Letts] as a prince would a peasant,” Todd McCarthy wrote in THR’s review.
Born in Eritrea in East Africa to Italian parents on Dec. 1, 1948, Girone studied acting at the Silvio d’Amico National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome. He worked steadily on stage and screen since the mid-1970s, primarily in Italy.
In 2021, he received lifetime achievement awards from the Venice International Film Festival and Flaiano Film Festival.
Survivors include his wife, actress Victoria Zinny, whom he married in 1982, and his stepchildren, Veronica and Karl.