Acting

Tommaso Ragno

Born 1 June 1967 · Vieste, Apulia, Italy · 59

Tommaso Ragno is an italian actor. Tommaso Ragno, leading actor in Oscar nominated Italian film Vermiglio (2024), was born in Vieste, a coastal town in the province of Foggia, as the eldest of two children. His family, mainly from Apulia and on the grand-maternal side from ex-Yugoslavia, moved to Piacenza when he was two 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 resides in Rome. In 1988, he debuted as a stage actor in the Greek tragedy La seconda generazione with a collection of pieces by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides directed by Mario Martone. Since the 1990s, he has worked repeatedly with Carlo Checci, whom he calls his "greatest teacher". He made his film debut in 1997 starring in We all fall down by Davide Ferrario. In 2001 he was the lead in Chimera, directed by Pappi Corsicato, and in 2007, he starred alongside Isabelle Huppert in Medea Miracle by Tonino De Berdani. Other works feature The Council of Egypt (2002), Unseen (2007), Me and You (2012), Like Crazy (2016) and Bloody Richard (2017). In 2018, he starred in Happy as Lazzaro, directed by Alice Rohrwacher. The film won the Best Screenplay Award at the Cannes Film Festival as well as the American National Board of Review's Best Foreign Language Film Award. For his work in the film as the grown-up Tancredi, Ragno was nominated for the CinEuphoria Awards for Best Ensemble - International Competition. Other notable works he starred in include Nanni Moretti's Three Floors in 2021 and Paolo Virzì's Dry in 2022 shot before the pandemic. In 2022 he won the Nastro d'Argento for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Mario Martone's Nostalgia. He played Marcello in the 2018 TV series The Miracle, directed by Niccolò Ammaniti, for which he won the Flaiano Prize as well as the Golden Screen Award. In 2020, he played the Italian mafia boss Donatello Fadda in the fourth season of Fargo, written and directed by Noah Hawley.