Son of a barber and a cinema cashier, Franco Fabrizi started his career as a model and an actor in fotoromanzi.

[1] Fabrizi also starred on several revues and stage works, then he debuted on the big screen with a supporting role in Chronicle of a Love (Cronaca di un amore) (1950), Michelangelo Antonioni's feature film debut.

[1] The role that made him known was as Fausto in Federico Fellini's I vitelloni; from then he was inextricably linked to the character of a full-time seducer, a young wastrel, a young not-so-young man who refuses to grow up, a character that he reprised, with different facets, in a great number of films.

[1] Past the 1950s, Fabrizi was mainly relegated to character roles in Italian, French and Spanish minor productions;[1] he still appeared on several major works of Italian cinema, and one of his last great roles was in Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice.

During his recovery, he was diagnosed with colon cancer, from which he died in 1995.