Guadagnino was born on 10 August 1971 in Palermo to an Italian father from Canicattì, Sicily, and an Algerian mother who grew up in Casablanca. He spent his early childhood in Ethiopia, where his father taught history and Italian literature at a technical school in Addis Ababa. The family left Ethiopia for Italy in 1977 to escape the Ethiopian Civil War, settling in Palermo.