Bud Spencer

Biography

Bud Spencer was born as Carlo Pedersoli on October 31, 1929, in Naples, Italy, as the son of a family of industrialists. He grew up in Naples and in Rome where he started to study chemistry in 1946. But he soon had to give up his studies when his family moved to South America. In Rio de Janeiro and in Buenos Aires, Pedersoli worked several occasional jobs before he returned to Italy in 1948. Back home, he studied law and focused intensively on his athletic passion, swimming. In 1952, he participated in the Olympic Games in Helsinki, four years later he again was a member of Italy's Olympic swimming team in Melbourne.

In 1957, he graduated from university and at the same time ended his career as a professional swimmer. He returned to South America where he earned his living as a factory worker. Three years later, he again returned to Italy: Pedersoli married, started a family, and mainly worked as a composer for folk and pop music until 1964. Pedersoli had made his acting debut already in 1950 in a tiny role in the history epic "Quo Vadis". Until the end of the 1950s, he played several smaller roles in war movies and historic films.

In 1967, Pedersoli was offered the joint leading role, together with Mario Girotti, in the Italo western "Gott vergibt – wir beide nie" ("God Forgives... I Don"t!"). For marketing reasons (and because Pedersoli did not want to jeopardize his renown as a successful composer), the leading actors took over American-sounding artist names: Mario Girotti became Terence Hill, and Carlo Pedersoli became Bud Spencer, a name that by his own account was inspired by his veneration for actor Spencer Tracy and his fondness of Budweiser beer. While the duo's first, rather serious films did not turn out overly successful, both made their big breakthrough in 1969 with the Western comedy "Die rechte und die linke Hand des Teufels" ("My Name Is Trinity") and its sequel "Vier Fäuste für ein Halleluja" ("Trinity Is Still My Name", 1971).

Sometimes with, sometimes without Terence Hill: Until the mid-1980s, Bud Spencer starred in a series of box office hits and became, not least in Germany, a superstar and a crowd favourite. Besides Spencer's amiably stoic appearance, signature features of his films include wild, comic-like exaggerated brawls but sometimes also unexpectedly emotional story components, for instance, in the boxing film "Der Bomber" (1982).

Since the end of the 1980s, Spencer has nearly exclusively appeared in (Italian) crime series, including "Zwei Supertypen in Miami" ("Extralarge", 1990 to 1993) alongside Philipp Michael Thomas. In 1994, he and Terence Hill starred in the comedy "Die Troublemaker" ("The Trouble Makers"). However, the film did not meet its expectations at the box office.

In 2005, Bud Spencer ran for a seat in the Italian regional parliament in Lazio for the "Forza Italia" party of contested Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi but his campaign did not turn out as a success. After this defeat, Spencer withdrew from politics. In 2009, he returned to the movie screen after a four-year hiatus: In the romantic crook comedy "Mord ist mein Geschäft, Liebling", Bud Spencer plays a mobster.

Bud Spencer died June 27, 2016 in Rome, age 86.