Balzo lived at Artegna, a small town in the province of Udine, until the age of 18. Very close to his family, he remembers with affection his grandmother who, during the 1976 earthquake in the Friuli region, saved him from the rubble of the house that was collapsing around him and in doing so leaped to fame in the newspaper headlines.
Balzo was encouraged by his friends to make his debut in show business, taking part in 1995 in the beauty contest “Photographic Model of the Year” and winning the national title. In the same year, he finished his studies at technical college and gained his diploma with a mark of 56 out of 60.
In 1998, Balzo won the title “Mr Friuli”. The recognition he got encouraged him in the following year to take part in the most important national contest for men, “The handsomest man in Italy”, winning the national final by a unanimous vote. For Raffaello, the doors to show business were thrown wide open. He moved to Milan and began working as a model for the most important Italian and foreign designers, among whom Gianfranco Ferré, Versace, Ermenegildo Zegna, Vivienne Westwood, and treading in the process the catwalks of the whole world – London, Rome, New York.
Alongside his modelling career, Balzo has constantly committed himself to elocution and drama studies, strongly desiring a future in television and cinema. His first television appearance was as “Carramba Boy”, alongside Raffaella Carrà in the Rai Uno transmission “Carramba che fortuna!”
