Benito Stefanelli

Benito Stefanelli — Biography

Rather than a marquee name, Benito Stefanelli is remembered chiefly as one of the recurring henchmen and stunt hands of Sergio Leone's westerns. Born in Rome on 2 September 1928, he appeared on screen in more than sixty productions between 1955 and 1991 while also working as a weapons instructor and, on many of the same westerns, as the stuntman who staged the fight choreography. He played a gang member in all three films of Leone's so-called Dollars trilogy — A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly — and also turned up in Once Upon a Time in the West; in Wanted he played the town drunk opposite Giuliano Gemma. Fluent in English, he is also said to have interpreted for Clint Eastwood on the set of A Fistful of Dollars.

His career was not confined to westerns: in the 1980s he took roles in historical-fantasy productions such as Ladyhawke, The Barbarians and A Season of Giants. He died in Rome on 18 December 1999.