Mimo Billi(1915-1974)

Mimo Billi, stage name of Giacomo Gilli was an Italian actor. According to certain sources was born in Imola but not in Bologna in 1910 (instead of 1915). He grew up in boarding school in Bergamo and moved, once adult, first to Genoa and then to Rome. From 1935 to 1946 he lived in Africa where he had gone with his own theater company to perform on tour in Abyssinia, Somalia and Eritrea. Enlisted as a volunteer at the outbreak of World War II, he was taken prisoner at the Battle of Agordat and was able to return to Italy only after the war. Between 1950 and 1969 he played for the cinema character roles in fifty films. He was also in soap operas interpreter, and for television he has appeared in a number of dramas, TV series and originals from 1962 to 1967. He also starred in the theater, playing the Duke in "The Shifting heart" drama Richard Beynon, directed by Leo McKern with Clelia Matania, Adrienne Corri, Kenneth J. Warren and other actors. In 1961 he is among the interpreters of "Teresa Desqueiroux" of François Mauriac, directed by Giorgio Albertazzi.