Since the seventies Renato Montalbano has dedicated himself more to the small screen as a supporting actor in the various dramas in which he took part, sometimes interpreting the entire television series with central roles for the development of the plots.

Montalbano was also very active on television, where he debuted in 1958 and appeared in dozens of television films and miniseries, often in prominent roles.

Montalbano is an Italian character actor, but of all his filmography, probably the one that has remained most imprinted in the collective memory: in What happened to Totò Baby? ( It is a parody of the 1962 film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford). in fact, he is the young and naive postman murdered by the mad protagonist, who finally walled up his body, however leaving his dangling arm visible, macabrely adapted to a lamp holder.

He made his film debut in 1956, and he was among the most active character actors in Italian cinema for about thirty years, alternating genre films and auteur films.

In 1955 Montalbano abandoned his university studies in medicine to attend at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, from which he graduated in 1957.