Francesco Pannofino

Francesco Pannofino — Biography

Francesco Pannofino is a familiar name in Italy both on screen and in the dubbing studio. In film and television he is best remembered as the frazzled director René Ferretti in Boris; in Italian dubbing he is known as the official voice of George Clooney and Denzel Washington. He works as both actor and voice artist.

Born in Pieve di Teco in Liguria to a family from Locorotondo, he moved to Rome with them after 1972. He began as a stage actor between the late 1970s and early 1980s and moved into film and television in the mid-1990s. He played the mobster Tommaso Buscetta in the miniseries Giovanni Falcone – L'uomo che sfidò Cosa Nostra and appeared in films such as Night Bus, Different from Whom?, Men vs. Women, Workers and Ogni maledetto Natale. Boris, a TV series (2007-2010, 2022) and a 2011 film, was his defining screen work; he also contributed its song Ciak.

He is considered one of the most representative dubbers of the fifth generation of Italian voice actors. He also dubbed Kurt Russell, Antonio Banderas, Wesley Snipes, Mickey Rourke and Daniel Day-Lewis, and voiced Hagrid in the Harry Potter films, the title role played by Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, Gil Grissom in CSI and the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy. He also narrated the official Harry Potter audiobooks.