A husky, solidly-built, imposing Italian character actor, Celi began his career on the Brazilian stage. In films made in a variety of countries, he showed versatility as an actor but tended to be cast as villains, most memorably as the eyepatch-wearing foil to James Bond in Thunderball (1965). He died of a heart attack hours before the Italian premiere of his last film, The St. Petersburg Mysteries (1986), which he also directed.