Aldo Lado was born in Fiume, Italy (today Rijeka, Croatia) on 5 December 1934.

Lado came up through the film industry as an assistant director, notably to Bernardo Bertolucci on The Conformist (1970). After writing the story for the 1971 giallo The Designated Victim, he made his directorial debut later that year with Short Night of Glass Dolls. Lado took the job after two previous directors, Maurizio Lucidi and Antonio Margheriti, fell through. The film was a success, and he followed it with another giallo, Who Saw Her Die?.

Lado's subsequent films were in a variety of genres, including drama (Woman Buried Alive, The Cousin), romance (La cosa buffa), and horror (Last Stop on the Night Train). In 1979, he directed the Star Wars cash-in The Humanoid, for which he was credited under the George Lucas-esque pseudonym "George B. Lewis". In 1981, he directed the Alberto Moravia adaptation La disubbidienza.

In 2013, after a 20-year hiatus, he directed the film Il Notturno di Chopin.

Lado published his first short story in 2016, in the anthology Nuovi delitti di lago. In 2017 he published I film che non vedrete mai ('The films you will never see'), a compilation based on Lado's own unproduced screenplays.

Lado died at his home in Rome on the morning of 25 November 2023, at the age of 88.