Italian theatrical, film, and television actor whose career spanned 63 years. He was nominated for the David di Donatello award for best actor in 2008 for the film I Vicerè.
He left high school in Palermo when he was 16 years old, and moved to Rome to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. In order to survive, he took many jobs: waiter, furniture mover, and a brief appearance as a slave in the film Ben-Hur.
In his long career he often interpreted the role of the average Italian immigrant from southern Italy, who slowly began to enjoy moderate success during the years of the Italian economic miracle. His films showcased all the freshness of the 1960s, the 1970s and the heavier transition to the 1980s, focusing on the common life in several Italian cities such as Rome, Verona or Milan, balanced between personal happiness and professional achievement.
Buzzanca often interpreted roles of a subordinate white collar worker, with a heavy vein of machismo, as a frustrated employee who tries to redeem his dull existence with his virility. He became famous for his role in the film Il merlo maschio (The Male Blackbird), where in a provincial environment of cultural importance, the philharmonic orchestra of the Arena di Verona, he vents out his own frustrations, indulging into candaulism when he induces his bride to expose her naked body in the middle of a bridge in Verona.
On 2 November 2014, Buzzanca appeared on Domeica Live with host Barbara D’Urso. He spoke about living in poverty, about his wife, who died 4 years earlier, and about his 2 sons and his grandchildren. On 18 December 2022, Buzzanca died at the Agostino Gemelli University Policlinic in Rome, where he was recovered a few days prior because of a fall, at the age of 87.
Link to Wikipedia biography