Conti had entered features with a small but pivotal role in the little-seen film version of Brecht's "Galileo" (1975). He offered a wonderful performance as a man who may or not have murdered his twin in the well-crafted "Eclipse" (1976) but he did not truly come into his own as a leading actor until the one-two punch of "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" (1982) and "Reuben, Reuben" (1983). In the former, Conti was effective as a bilingual POW while in the latter, he shone as a boozy Scottish poet teaching at a New England college. Conti earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination for "Reuben, Reuben" but Hollywood was uncertain as to how best tap his prowess. He was wasted in the comedy "American Dreamer" (1983) but not as the hilarious neurotic psychiatrist in Robert Altman's "Beyond Therapy" (1987) or as the archetypal Greek lothario in "Shirley Valentine" (1989) or as a Spanish bar owner in "Someone Else's America" (1995). An attempt to find small screen stardom as a transplanted lawyer in "The Wright Verdicts" (CBS, 1995) proved futile and Conti returned to the London stage. More recently, he appeared in a couple of episodes of the NBC sitcom "Friends" as the snobby father-in-law of Ross Geller (David Schwimmer).