Italian child actor Enzo Staiola, best known for playing, at the age of 9 years old, the sad-faced son Bruno Ricci in Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 Neo-realist masterpiece Ladri di Biciclette (Bicycle Thieves), has died. He was 85.

La Repubblica, the Italian newspaper, on Wednesday was first to report on the death of Staiola, who shot to international fame for his role in the Oscar-winning drama. No cause of death was given.

Staiola’s co-star in Bicycle Thieves in the role of Antonio Ricci, his impoverished father, was Lamberto Maggiorani, a factory worker-turned-actor, as De Sica wanted working class authenticity for his humanist drama. Antonio, with son in tow, in the film searches for a thief and his stolen bicycle, without which he cannot work and feed his young family.

The loss of the bicycle proves to be a body-blow for the forlorn father, who goes on a frantic and fruitless odyssey through the streets of Rome. At one point, a desperate Antonio steals a bike himself and is caught by people nearby. When they show him mercy, the crestfallen father is left ashamed in front of his son.  

The classic Italian Neo-realist film left Staiola forever etched in celluloid history as Bruno Ricci, whose memorably big eyes were so expressive of childhood innocence as the young boy followed his anguished father through the streets of post-war Rome.

Born on Nov. 15, 1939 in Rome, Staiola in a July 2023 interview with La Repubblica recalled first meeting De Sica, the celebrated Italian director, who apparently saw him walking home from school.

“I was coming back from school and at a certain point I noticed this big car following me at walking pace,” Staiola explained. “Then this gentleman with gray hair, all dressed up, got out and asked me: ‘What’s your name?’, and I was silent. And he said: ‘But don’t you talk?’ ‘I don’t feel like talking,’ I replied. My mother always told me not to be too familiar if someone stopped us… But De Sica followed me home. My parents recognized him right away. He was a famous actor. He sat at the table in our house and tried to convince them to let me act in his new film. But they didn’t want to.”

Staiola eventually got the part of Bruno without having to audition after his uncle took him down to De Sica’s studio to be reintroduced. Despite the success of Bicycle Thieves, which won the Academy Award for best foreign film, Staiola never worked again with the famed Italian director.

“De Sica was like that; he discovered you and then that was it. Maybe if he had followed me and made me other proposals I would have become an actor for life,” he recalled in the 2023 interview.

Staiola, after his breakout role in Bicycle Thieves (sometimes known by the title The Bicycle Thief), went on to star in a few other movies, including Joseph L Mankeiwicz’s The Barefoot Contessa drama in 1954, which also starred Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner. His credits included 1950s Italian movies like Hearts Without Borders, Vulcano, Guilt is Not Mine and A Tale of Five Women. And he had a small part in 1977 in Flavio Mogherini’s The Girl in the Yellow Pyjamas.

But Staiola after early success retreated from film sets and became a mathematics teacher and a longtime clerk in a land registry office. And he appears to have regretted becoming an Italian movie star.

“In the end, it was a real pain in the ass,” he told La Repubblica. “As a kid I could never play with my friends because if I made a mark on my face I couldn’t make movies anymore. Then it was also a bit boring, the times of cinema are very long.”