It was close to midnight, and Rino Barillari was prowling Rome’s back streets in a taxi, hunting for celebrities.
Approaching a cluster of smokers outside a restaurant, Mr. Barillari, known in Italy as the “king of paparazzi,” barked out instructions to the cabby.
“Slow down, go slow. Who are these people,” he said, rapidly raising his camera, which he just as rapidly dropped. “No one. Falliment,” he shrugged, anglicizing the Italian word for failure, fallimento, a recurring linguistic quirk.
His night’s quest to capture images of the famous in casual — or, better, compromising — moments had begun hours earlier, with Mr. Barillari, 80, shuffling through downtown Rome, heavy camera bag in tow, quizzing sundry waiters, restaurant owners, flower vendors and a limousine driver about the night’s action. He kept an eye on his phone, but none of his estimated 500 spotters had a celebrity sighting to report.
“This job is difficult if you don’t have informants to tell you what’s going on — you can’t work,” he said, one of many trade secrets he’d reveal this night.
Interminable stakeouts are part of the job. “I spent an entire week tracking Lady Gaga” while she was in Rome in 2021 working on a film about the 1995 murder of Maurizio Gucci, he said.
Hitting popular night spots is also part of the routine. On a warm November night, he stopped for champagne cocktails at a high-end eatery, and later, he dined at the restaurant Da Luigi, where he exchanged quips with a descendant of one of the last of Venice’s ruling doges. A wall near the cash register was lined with photos taken by Mr. Barillari: of Bill Clinton, Miley Cyrus, Pope John Paul II playing bocce.
No one is safe from his lens when Mr. Barillari has them in his sights, and he has been looking for 65 years.
He was 14 when came to Rome in 1959 from a small southern town in Calabria, landing in the capital in the right place at the right time.
The city’s film studios were working overtime, and Rome was known as Hollywood on the Tiber. For someone brimming with youthful enthusiasm — and loads of audacity — it was a booming playground of opportunity.
His entry into the image game didn’t even involve a camera. At first, he procured tourists (or, less charitably, marks) for local “scattini,” photographers who snapped and sold pictures of tourists posing in front of Rome’s monuments.
A year later, in 1960, the film “La Dolce Vita” was released, which not only put paparazzi in a featured role, its director, Federico Fellini, was the one who coined the term “paparazzo,” the name he gave a photographer in the film.
Time magazine picked it up in a 1961 feature that spotlighted the “ravenous wolf pack of freelance photographers who stalk big names for a living,” and the plural, “paparazzi,” became part of the English language.
With the same confidence and sass as a teenager that he retains today, Mr. Barillari saw his shot and took it. From the outset, he embraced the profession with all of its trappings: chasing errant movie stars while riding shotgun on a Vespa; sneaking photos with a zoom lens from improbable vantage points like the trunk of a car; dinners half-eaten because an informant called in a tip.
There were the disguises, dressing up as a priest, a monk, a police officer, to get closer to the stars. He even used to hide a camera lens in his tie, but it wasn’t particularly successful because the shutter made a loud noise.
“In the early years, if you called a colleague a paparazzo, you risked getting sued,” he recalled. But “I am paparazzo,” he said, in English, with a note of pride.
His speech is peppered with anglicized words, but he said he barely speaks English, making do with a few key phrases, including, “Welcome” and, “I like you.”
While Mr. Barillari is proud of his work, the job of paparazzo has always been controversial, raising ethical and legal questions. And though the public may be hungry for the output, that doesn’t mean that those behind the lens who are prying into ostensibly private moments are admired.
Mr. Barillari himself has spent time in courtrooms. His most recent case arose from an encounter in May 2024 with the French actor Gérard Depardieu, who objected to being photographed while lunching with his partner, Magda Vavrusova, at Harry’s Bar on the Via Veneto, the street immortalized by Fellini in his film.
Mr. Barillari has sued Mr. Depardieu for injuries he asserts he sustained after he was attacked by the couple. Ms. Vavrusova is countersuing, accusing the photographer of causing her bodily harm, Mr. Depardieu’s lawyer said.
In his testimony at a hearing in October, Mr. Barillari argued that as the actor was a public person in a public place, he had only done as paparazzi do. Then he offered advice for privacy seekers: “Go to Tor San Lorenzo, go to the Garbatella, or on the Appia,” neighborhoods outside downtown Rome, he said, to the amusement of those listening in the courtroom.
“If you go to Via Veneto with a woman, it means you’re looking for publicity,” he insisted.
Mr. Barillari swears that all he wants is an apology from Mr. Depardieu. The next hearing will be in January in front of a justice of the peace.
Physical risks are a hazard of the job, mostly skirmishes with bodyguards, bouncers and, often, the subjects themselves. By his count, he has made more than 160 trips to the emergency room, has broken 11 ribs and was stabbed once. His camera was smashed 76 times.
Some of those skirmishes made news.
A furious actress attacked him with an ice cream cone in the 1960s after he photographed her, he said, with a man who was not her husband. He was assaulted by Barbra Streisand’s bodyguards, who were arrested. An Italian millionaire hit him after he photographed Princess Margaret, sister of Queen Elizabeth II, at a disco. In that incident, Mr. Barillari was forced to turn over the camera, “but luckily I had slipped the roll of film into my underpants,” he said at the time.
He also needed to get stitches after a dustup with the actor Peter O’Toole, a tussle that led to a lawsuit, which Mr. Barillari won.
When Rome’s cinematic floodlights began to dim, Mr. Barillari shifted gears, and in the mid-1960s, he began chronicling Italy’s tumultuous, decades-long experience with terrorism, kidnappings and organized crime. He had a police scanner so he could eavesdrop and be the first on the scene.
He worked for two Rome-based daily newspapers, first Il Tempo, then Il Messaggero, which still publishes his photos in the society pages.
“He has a natural predisposition for photographing celebrities, but he also has great skills as a news reporter,” said Massimo Martinelli, the editor of Il Messaggero, who used to work alongside Mr. Barillari.
Over time, Mr. Barillari achieved celebrity status himself, with exhibitions at highbrow institutions, including Italy’s national contemporary art museum. Now, celebrities take selfies with him. Alec Baldwin, known for confrontations with American paparazzi, even posted one on social media.
At his advanced age, Mr. Barillari still does his nightly rounds, rain or shine.
“He’s out and about every day because I don’t think he can help himself,” said Mr. Martinelli, who regularly receives his photographs in the middle of the night. “He has no heirs of his caliber.”
The photographer still loves what he does, according to Antonella Mastrosanti, his second wife, and as much of a night owl as he is. “I see it when he takes photos, when he follows people around, he’s happy and content, he becomes like a child,” she said.
But he fears for the future of his profession.
He grumbled about the anti-paparazzo lasers that Hollywood stars like Leonardo DiCaprio have been adopting of late, which blind cameras.
And don’t get him started on cellphones, which have turned most of humanity into his competition. “Digital technology has been the decline and the agony of the paparazzo,” he said.
His core rules have stayed the same since he started: Don’t get too friendly with celebrities because a paparazzo takes no prisoners. Take pictures first, argue later. “You have to take exclusive photos, not the ones they want you to take,” he said. “War is war.”
On the whole, November had been a pretty good month, with encounters with Mel Gibson, Spike Lee and Robert De Niro. The night he let a reporter join him, seeking out celebrities into the wee hours, had been something of a bust. But considering the big picture, what was one bad outing?
“I have lived,” he said, “a billionaire’s life without a dime.”
Elisabetta Povoledo is a Times reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years.
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