Italian Actor Giuliano Gemma Dies In Car Crash

words by Silvia Donati Actor Giuliano Gemma, famous for his many roles in the spaghetti western genre, died on Tuesday following a car accident. He was 75. Gemma was driving alone in the car near Cerveteri (Rome) where he lived, when the vehicle collided with another car coming from the opposite direction. He was taken to a hospital in Civitavecchia and pronounced dead shortly after arrival. He was born in Rome on September 2, 1938. His first films date back to the early 1960s with a smaller part in Luchino Visconti’s “Il Gattopardo”, starring alongside Alain Delon and Terence Hill. He then began starring in spaghetti western films, becoming one of the major actors of the genre, known in Italy and abroad. Some of his most famous films are “A Pistol for Ringo”, “Blood for a Silver Dollar”, “Day of Anger” and “The Desert of Tartars”, for which he won the David di Donatello, the Italian equivalent of the Oscar, for his portrayal of Major Matis in 1976. In recent times, his movie appearances were sparse preferring to work in TV, with the notable exception of Woody Allen’s “To Rome with Love”, where he played the hotel manager.