Legendary Italian film director best known for directing the classic spaghetti Western films A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, all of which starred the great Clint Eastwood.
He worked as an film assistant to director Vittorio De Sica on the 1948 neorealism film Bicycle Thieves.
He turned down a chance to direct The Godfather in order to film the last feature of his career, the 1984 crime epic Once Upon a Time in America starring Robert De Niro. It was the third film in his Once Upon a Time trilogy.
He had three children named Francesca, Raffaella and Andrea with his wife Carla Leone.
After making three Westerns with Eastwood, he went on to direct another classic Western, the 1968 feature Once Upon a Time in the West, starring Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda and Claudia Cardinale.