Born in Gioi, a village in southern Campania, de Berardinis grew up in the Apulian city of Foggia. After his first experiences as stage actor in the company of Carlo Quartucci, he started his collaboration with Perla Peragallo and, in 1968, he collaborated to the play "Don Quixote" of Carmelo Bene. During the 1970s, he moved to Marigliano, near Naples, with Perla Peregallo, in which he created several plays of improvisational theatre. In 1983 he collaborated with the "Cooperativa Nuova Scena" of Bologna and staged several Shakespearian plays, as "Hamlet, King Lear" and "The Tempest". In 1987 he founded the company "Teatro di Leo" (i.e.: Leo's Theatre), which produced shows, workshops and meetings. In 1994 de Bernardinis directed the St. Leonard Theatre of Bologna and, from 1994 to 1997, took over the artistic direction of the theater's Festival of Santarcangelo di Romagna. On 4 May 2001 he received the honorary degree of the University of Bologna, for the academic discipline of humanities. On 16 June 2001, de Berardinis went into a coma after a plastic surgery, due to the error of an anesthesiologist. After seven years in a coma, he died in Rome on 18 September 2008.
