Tommaso Ragno
Tommaso Ragno is an Italian theatre and cinema actor and narrator. He is most known for his appearances in "Fargo 4", "The Miracle (Il ") and "Happy as Lazzaro" as well as his extensive career in the theatre. Biography. Early life and education. Tommaso Ragno was born on the 1st June 1967 in Vieste, a coastal town in the province of Foggia, as the eldest of two children. His family, mainly from Apulia - Italy and on the grand-maternal side from ex. Yugoslavia, moved to Piacenza when he was 2 years old. Always having been very introverted, he spent  a lot of time in solitude reading books and studying literature, planning on becoming a writer. However, later he went on to study acting at the "Paolo Grassi School of Dramatic Art" in Milan. After having spent a part of his life living in Berlin, Ragno currently resides in Rome, where he has also spent the pandemic lockdown. Theatre. In 1988 he debuted in the greek tragedy "La seconda generazione ("a collection of pieces by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides) directed by Mario Martone who also directed Woyzeck (written by Georg Büchner) in which Ragno performed in 1989. He has worked  repeatedly with Carlo Checci, whom he calls his greatest teacher, since the 90s, as well as with a number of other directors: Strehler, Luca Ronconi, Toni Servillo, Valerio Binasco, Carmelo Rifici, Cesare Lievi. Ragno returned to the greek theatre in 2002 with Euripides Electra directed by Piero Maccarinelli and 2004 with Medea directed by Emma Dante. Cinema. His first encounter with cinema was in 1997 when he performed in Tutti giù per terra ("We All Fall Down)" by Davide Ferrario. In 2001 he was the protagonist in "Chimera", directed by Pappi Corsicato, and in 2007, alongside Isabelle Huppert, in "Médée  miracle (Medea Miracle)" directed by Tonino De Berdani and filmed in french. He shot "Il consiglio d'Egitto" "(The Council of Egypt)" in 2002 and "L'uomo privato" (The Private Man) in 2007 with Emidio Greco, "Io e te (Me and You)" in 2012 with Bernardo Bertolucci, "La pazza gioia (Like Crazy)" in 2016 with Paolo Virzì and "Riccardo va all'inferno" "(Bloody Richard) in 2017 with Roberta Torre." In 2018 he played in "Lazzaro felice (Happy as Lazzaro)" directed by Alice Rohrwacher who won the Award for the best Screenplay for it at the Cannes Film Festival as well as the American  National Board of Review's Best Foreign Language Film Award. In his role as the grown-up Tancredi Ragno has been nominated at the CinEuphoria Awards for Best Ensemble - International Competition and at the Faro Island Film Festival for the Best Ensemble Performance. He has performed in Nanni Moretti's "Tre Piani (Three Floors)" adapted after the novel "Three Floors Up" by the Israeli writer Eshkol Nevo, which has already been nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival as well as Siccità directed by Paolo Virzi both of which were shot before the pandemic. TV. Starting  in 1998 with Più luce non Basta directed by Elisabetta Lodoli, Ragno has played various roles in different fiction, establishing himself as the protagonist in the series Polizia District-11 and "Il tredicesimo apostolo (The thirteenth apostle)", and then taking part in the series produced by Sky called 1992 (2015), playing the character of Michele Mainaghi. In the 2018 "Il Miracolo (The Miracle)" by Niccolò Ammaniti in the role of the priest Marcello, he won the Flaiano Award for best interpretation as well as the Golden Screen Award for Best Interpretation and the Serie Mania Award in the category International Competition  - Best Actor. In 2019, he played among the protagonists of the TV film directed by Roan Johnson, "La stagione della caccia - C'era una volta Vigata (The hunting season - Once upon a time Vigata)" based on one of Andrea Camilleri's historical novels for which he won the Franco Enriquez Award for Best Actor. 2020 marked the year of international breakthrough for Ragno, playing the Italian mafia boss Donatello Fadda in the American tv series Fargo 4 written and directed by Noah Hawley. Narration. Since 2004 he has been narrating literary classics such as The Portrait of Dorian Grey, Dracula, Room  with a view or Frankenstein on the program Ad Alta Voce on Rai Radio 3 as well as audiobooks such as Charles Dickens "Oliver Twist" and Umberto Eco's "Il pendolo di Foucault" (Foucault's Pendulum) and "Il nome della rosa" (The Name of the Rose) for which he received the Voci Nell'Ombra Award for Best Audio Book Narration in 2017. In 2021 Ragno narrated part of the animated film Yaya e Lennie: The Walking Liberty directed by Alessandro Rak.