Terence Hill Movies and Career Information

Terence Hill (born Mario Girotti on 29 March 1939) is an Italian actor. He is best known for starring in multiple action and western films (so-called spaghetti westerns) together with his long time filmpartner Bud Spencer. Hill was born in Venice, Italy. As a child he lived in the small town of Lommatzsch, Germany from 1943 to 1945, during World War II, surviving the Dresden Bombing. His mother was German, his father an Italian chemist. After being discovered by Italian filmmaker Dino Risi for Vacanze col Gangster (Holiday with the Gangster, 1951) at an early age of 12, he had, after 27 movies in Italy (including Gli sbandati), a major film-role in Luchino Visconti's The Leopard (Il Gattopardo, 1963). In 1964 he returned to Germany and there appeared in a series of Heimatfilmen, adventure and western films, made after novels by German author Karl May. In 1967, he returned to Italy to act in God Forgives... I Don't! (Dio perdona... Io no!, 1968). He changed his name to Terence Hill in the same year. The name was made up, as a publicity stunt, by the film producers; he had to choose from a list of twenty names and picked the one with his mother's initials. In a Q&A, he dismissed as a