"This is not the end of my career; I still have many films to make, so we will talk about nostalgia another time. The most important woman in my life? Vanessa Redgrave, the mother of my children." Thus, Franco Nero, 83 years old and with over 250 films to his credit, spoke frankly at the Taormina Film Festival.He also addressed his relationship with television series, the tragedy of Gaza, the heroes he has portrayed on screen, and much more.When asked about historical characters he would have liked to play but never had the chance to bring to the screen, Nero replied: "I have been fortunate to play heroes from many nations. In Italy I played Garibaldi, in Hungary Árpád, and in Yugoslavia another national hero: Banović Strahinja. The only one I was offered and could not play was Atatürk. I even went to Istanbul to talk to the Turkish government about it. They told me I had the right face for the role, but when politics and governments get too involved in cinema, projects often do not materialize."During the 1960s and 1970s, Nero participated in many popular Italian B-movies, including poliziotteschi, giallo, and spaghetti westerns. But his breakthrough role was the title character in the spaghetti western "Django" (1966), which made him a pop culture icon and launched an international career spanning more than two hundred leading and supporting roles in a wide variety of films and television productions. His work was also highly popular in Latin America.Among his best-known films are "The Bible" (1966), "Camelot" (1967), "Il giorno della civetta" (1968), "A Bullet for the General" (1968), "The Companions" (1970), "Confessions of a Police Captain" (1971), "Keoma" (1976), "Bloody Hitch-Hiking" (1977), "The Justice of the Ninja" (1981), "Die Hard 2" (1990), "Letters to Juliet" (2010), "Cars 2" (2011), "John Wick: Chapter 2" (2017), "Red Land" (2018), and "The Pope's Exorcist" (2023).Asked why he alternated between art films and popular cinema throughout his career, he responded: "It was a deliberate choice. I made a western, then an Elio Petri film, another western, then one by Florestano Vancini, Damiano Damiani, Luis Buñuel, and Chabrol. I kept changing. I could have had a different career if I had focused solely on commercial films." He added: "For example, I was offered the role in 'They Call Me Trinity,' which later made Terence Hill a success. I was also offered 'La Piovra' (The Octopus), but I did not want to do television."When asked if he watches television series, he replied: "No, I hate them. I do not watch platforms; I only watch films. On TV, I mainly watch sports — football, tennis, boxing, practically all sports. And then the news, to stay informed."The actor does not shy away from geopolitics: "We are in times of war. First Putin and Ukraine, then Netanyahu and Gaza, and now Iran. Thousands, thousands, thousands of Palestinians massacred. Twenty-three thousand children. So much so that I wrote a song during a train journey from Rome to Milan with my trusted screenwriter," he revealed."The song is called 'Un mar di piccole lenzuola bianche' ('A Sea of Small White Sheets'), which are the sheets used to cover the bodies of dead children. I am very proud to have written it. I asked several singers to perform it, but they are afraid. They want to sing their own songs, not take a political stance."What scares you most today? "Illness, suffering. If someone has an accident or dies, that is one thing, but prolonged suffering is what I fear most," he confessed. "I am an eternal child, and I am proud of it. When someone tells me that, I am not offended; on the contrary, it makes me happy. I am like that in everything: in my relationships with others, in my way of facing life, in my relationships. I think it is a characteristic that has always accompanied me."