Alberto Sordi, the robust comic actor who portrayed the virtues and vices of the Italian everyman in more than 160 movies in a career that spanned more than a half a century, died on Monday at his home in Rome. He was 82.

Born on June 15, 1920 in Rome to a schoolteacher and a musician, he grew up in a working-class neighborhood, but studied drama in Milan. His movie career began in the late '30s, but not on screen: Sordi's first break was as Oliver Hardy's dubbed voice. From there he went on to radio and theater, before moving into cinema in the '40s.

It took awhile, but Sordi began to hit his stride in the early '50s in a string of inventive films from excellent directors: Federico Fellini's delightful romantic comedy, Lo Sceicco Bianco,/White Sheik (1952); and his sensitive drama, I Vitelloni (1953) where Sordi gave a nicely nuanced performance as an immature loafer with a fear of adult responsibilities; Steno's Un Americano a Roma/An American in Rome (1954), his first starring vehicle that gently satirized Italy's growing passion for things American; Giorgio Bianchi's Il Conte Max/Count Max (1957), playing a newspaper vendor who pretends to be a Roman count (displaying his full gift for farce); and Mario Monicelli's superb absurdist war comedy La Grande Guerra/The Great War (1959). Sordi's fine work in these films solidified his popularity to Italian moviegoers, becoming the very embodiment of the ordinary man in slightly extraordinary circumstances.

In the ensuing decades, Sordi's work may have not hit the high-water mark of his "golden period" in the '50s, but he achieved deserved international recognition for a number of quality films: he was nominated for a BAFTA (British Oscar equivalent) for Guy Hamilton's amusing World War II comedy The Best of Enemies (1961) co-starring David Niven; won a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy for Gian Luigi Polidoro's smart sex comedy Il Diavolo (1963) as a shy fur merchant attending a convention in Sweden who suffers a mid-life crisis; nominated again for a Golden Globe for Ken Annakin's jaunty romp Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965); won the Berlin Silver Bear Award for Best Actor for his terrific performance in Nanni Loy's Detenuto in attesa di giudizio/Why? (1971); a terrifying, Kafkaesque portrait of an innocent man imprisoned while on holiday for no explicable reason; and won the David di Donatello award (Italy's highest film honor) for Best Actor for what many feel is his most memorable role, Mario Monicelli's Un Borghese piccolo piccolo/An Average Little Man (1977), where he portrayed a middle-age father who decides to take justice into his own hands when his son is killed, superbly portraying the moral challenges that confront a law-abiding citizen when thrust into the role of vigalante.

Sordi continued to appear in numerous films throughout the remainder of his career, well into his late seventies. His last movie was a minor comedy he directed and co-wrote called Incontri proibiti/Forbidden Encounters (1998). Here he plays an old man who gets picked up by a beautiful young woman with a fetish for older guys! The beloved actor was well known to many Italians simply as Big Alberto. He is survived by his sister Aurelia.

by Michael T. Toole