Fúlvio Stefanini (October 12, 1939) is a Brazilian actor. He is known for his long career as a soap opera actor on TV Globo.
Contents
Biography
The son of Italian immigrants, Oreste and Agnese Stefanini, he was born in the city of São Paulo in 1939. At age 15, he dropped out of school and went to look for the Escola de Arte Dramática, affiliated with the University of São Paulo (USP). To enroll in the university, you had to be 18. “I did the math: three years until I turned 18, then another four years of school—that’s seven years before I could start?” It would take too long. So, I asked to audition at TV Tupi. At the time, Cassiano Gabus Mendes was the artistic director. I started in 1955, just as an extra, learning from the more experienced professionals.” He worked at the TV station for three years as an extra.
His first television role came in 1955, on TV Tupi’s program TV de Vanguarda, which aired television dramas. In his debut, he starred in Crime and Punishment, based on the novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. The following year, he made his film debut in Absolutamente Certo, in which he had a small role in a film starring Dercy Gonçalves and Anselmo Duarte. He continued working at TV Tupi until 1964, when he moved to TV Excelsior, where he starred in the soap opera Melodia Fatal. He worked at the network until 1968; his last soap opera there was Os Tigres, written by Marcos Rey. That same year, he moved to TV Record. Her first soap opera on the network was A Última Testemunha, starring Susana Vieira, written by Benedito Ruy Barbosa.
After making a few brief appearances on the Rio de Janeiro-based network TV Globo in 1973, he made his debut in his first soap opera for the network, Carinhoso. In the soap opera, there was a lonely architect who had separated from his wife and ended up falling in love with a secretary at the company where he worked, played by Rosamaria Murtinho. At the network, she appeared in soap operas such as Gabriela, Pátria Minha, Suave Veneno, and Porto dos Milagres, as well as series such as Tarcísio & Glória, Os Normais and Você Decide.
In 2003, he began a collaboration with writer Walcyr Carrasco, working on several of the author’s soap operas. Fúlvio was part of the cast of Chocolate com Pimenta, Alma Gêmea, Caras & Bocas, and Amor à Vida. As a result of this partnership in 2005, he won the APCA Television Award for Best Actor in Television for his portrayal of Osvaldo Santini in Alma Gêmea. His last role on TV Globo was in Amor à Vida. In 2015, he appeared in the series Questão de Família, which aired on the GNT cable channel, and in 2018, in the Space channel series Pacto de Sangue.
Having stepped away from television, he has been performing in Florian Zeller’s play The Father since 2016, in which he plays André, a friendly, funny, and grumpy 80-year-old man whose memory is beginning to fail due to old age. The play has been performed more than 200 times and seen by more than 80,000 audience members.
Filmography
Personal life
He has been married to Vera Stefanini since 1968, and they have two sons, Fúlvio and Leonardo. He's a SE Palmeiras fan.
In 2020, he ended up in the Intensive care unit (ICU), where he was hospitalized for four days following staphylococcus aureus a bacterial skin infection. In March 2026, he contracted a bacterial infection, which forced him to cancel some theater performances.
