He was known as a man of a thousand faces for his ability to assume so many divergent roles in more than 200 screen appearances in a career spanning 50 years and for his resourceful portrayals of various ethnic types.

Of Italian heritage, he played everything from a Mexican bandit, to a Russian doctor, to a Japanese sailor, to an Indian travel agent.

The family returned to the United States on July 4, 1924, and lived briefly at 802 South 8th Street in Philadelphia before moving to New York City the following year.

[citation needed] In 1925, after the Scozzari family had returned to the United States, his mother became a diva in New York City theater circles and his father an impresario.

In 1963, Scotti was cast as the Italian farmer Vincenzo Peruggia in the episode "The Tenth Mona Lisa" of the CBS anthology series, General Electric True, hosted by Jack Webb.

In the episode set in the year 1911, Peruggia steals the Mona Lisa from the Louvre museum in Paris but is apprehended by a French detective when he attempts to unload the painting on an art dealer.

Scotti portrayed Colonel Enrico Ferrucci in The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1968) and later appeared in the Academy Award-winning comedy Cactus Flower (1969), as Señor Arturo Sánchez, who unsuccessfully tries to seduce Ingrid Bergman's character.

Scotti voiced the Italian Cat in the Walt Disney animated film The Aristocats (1970), and appeared with Lindsay Wagner on her television special, Another Side of Me (1977).

Scotti died of lung cancer at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, on June 5, 1996.