Born in Rome in 1932, Leonardo Bragaglia is the son of the Futurist painter Alberto Bragaglia, known as the “pictor philosophus.” His uncles Anton Giulio Bragaglia, Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, and Arturo Bragaglia were active in the film industry. Leonardo began his career at a very young age as a child actor in the 1940s, playing small roles in films directed by his uncle Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia and in Vittorio De Sica’s "Sciuscià" (1946).