Felix Silla was born on January 11, 1937 in a small village outside Rome, Italy. Silla trained as a circus performer, came to the United States in 1955, and toured with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Show. His multiple talents--as a bareback rider, trapeze artist and tumbler--brought him to Hollywood where he became a stuntman, starting with the Gig Young-Shirley Jones vehicle, "A Ticklish Affair." His best-known roles are the maniacal, miniature Hitler who menaces George Segal in "The Black Bird" and Cousin Itt on the long-running TV series, "The Addams Family." He had doubled--often for children--in such hits as "The Towering Inferno," "The Hindenberg," and "Battlestar Galactica." Between movies, he frequently appears in Las Vegas and Reno night clubs with his own musical combo, "The Original Harmonica Band." Silla and wife Susan--a "little person," like himself--have been married since 1965 and have two children, Bonnie and Michael.


When he arrived in the United States at age 16, he spoke not a word of English and had no formal acting experience, but credits joining the Ringling Bros. circus with teaching him both language and performance skills, working first in the sideshow and then becoming skilled as both a clown and a bareback rider. Although the character of Cousin Itt did not debut on "The Addams Family" until over a third of the way through the entire series, Silla's delightfully odd and inspired performance of the character made him so popular that Cousin Itt was carried over into both the animated series and the motion picture versions of "The Addams Family", even though the character was a creation of television producer David Levy and not part of the original Charles Addams cartoons (neither was the character of "Thing"). His favorite role is that of "Litvak", the maniacal foe of George Seagal in 1975's "The Black Bird".