Conti also acted in such films as The Duellists (1977), Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Saving Grace (1986), The Quick and the Dead (1987), Shirley Valentine (1989), The Tempest (2010), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and Paddington 2 (2017).

[3][4] Conti was educated at independent Catholic boys' school Hamilton Park[5] St Aloysius' College, Glasgow;[6] and at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

[citation needed] Besides taking the leading role in the TV versions of Frederic Raphael's The Glittering Prizes and Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests, Conti appeared in the "Princess and the Pea" episode of the family television series Faerie Tale Theatre, guest-starred on Friends and Cosby, and played opposite Nigel Hawthorne in a long-running series of Vauxhall Astra car advertisements in the United Kingdom from the early to the mid-1990s.

[citation needed] Conti's novel The Doctor, about a former secret operations pilot for intelligence services, was published in 2004.

[9] Conti put his Hampstead house up for sale in 2015 for £17.5 million after his long-running opposition to the building plans of his neighbour, the footballer Thierry Henry.

[10] Conti had also opposed development plans for Hampstead's Grove Lodge, the 18th-century Grade II listed former home of novelist John Galsworthy.

[13] In the run up to the 2015 general election, Conti said in an interview published in several newspapers that he was once a Labour supporter but had come to view socialism as a “religion” with a "vicious, hostile spirit".