Faustino di Bauda

Faustino Di Bauda is the Canadian actor who portrays Sleepy and Walter on ABC's Once Upon a Time.

Biography
Faustino Di Bauda was born on September 16, 1965 in the city of Turin, Piedmont. At a year old, he immigrated to Canada with his family and grew up in Vancouver. His native tongue is Italian, and kept the language alive by attending school at the Italian Cultural Center for many years.

Faustino developed a love for performances, plays, television shows and movies, but stage fright kept him from going on stage. Instead, he channeled himself in physical sports; running, baseball, rugby, football, boxing, and became reputably good in wrestling. He competed in national wrestling championships and earned medals as a junior and juvenile in Olympic freestyle, but a shoulder injury at age twenty did not allow him to continue.

Self-employed as a professional stone masonry in his mid-thirties, a series of automobile accidents prompted him to stop working and focus on healing through physical therapy. He began practicing yoga after his massagist suggested it. Faustino received an invitation to an India-based yoga retreat and met fellow yogi Swami Ananda "Gary" Sagra, who encouraged him into acting. With more physical therapy and yoga, nearly two years later, Faustino returned to Canada. After gaining the aquaintance of an aspiring actor, he was recommended into attending the Lyric School of Acting. From there, he studied and earned his actor training credentials. However, a shortage of monetary funds forced him to take a break from school, and for some time he tried to resume work again as a stone masonry despite long term effects of the automobile injuries. Later that year, Faustino was sent on a wrestling assignment in Romania. Rather than go home straight after, he traveled around and met his future wife. In an effort to get to know her, Faustion lived in Moldova for about a year. They came back to Canada together and married five months later.

Returning to acting classes, he practiced under the instruction of coach Larry Moss. A year later, Faustino took a workshop in Los Angeles and was taught by Joe Palese. Soon after, training paid off and he nabbed an agent. In the next two years, while having success in a play role and six short films, Faustino was having a spell of bad luck with no callbacks for commercial work. Deciding to change things up, he began looking for jobs in film and television. In March of 2011, an audition for ABC's Once Upon a Time earned him his very first television role. Faustino's feature film debut is in the upcoming 2014 film Seventh Son, based on the first book of Joseph Delaney's dark fantasy novel series The Wardstone Chronicles, with Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.