Joe Pesci

Did You Know?

• In 1982, actor James Caan requested that mobster Anthony Fiato beat up Pesci for failing to pay an $8,000 hotel bill, according to an FBI-intercepted conversation.
• Pesci has been married and divorced three times; his second marriage was to model and actress Claudia Haro from 1988 to 1992.

Early life

Joseph Frank Pesci entered the world on February 9, 1943, in Newark, New Jersey. His mother, Mary, worked part-time as a barber, while his father, Angelo, drove a forklift for General Motors and tended bar. Of Italian heritage, his family roots trace to Turin and Aquilonia in Avellino province. He grew up in Belleville, New Jersey, and finished high school there.

By age five, he performed in New York plays; at ten, he was a regular on the TV show Startime Kids, alongside Connie Francis. From Belleville, he knew guitarist Tommy DeVito of The Four Lovers and keyboardist Bob Gaudio of The Royal Teens. In 1958, Pesci introduced Gaudio to DeVito and Frankie Valli, a move that created The Four Seasons. He remained close to DeVito for life, putting him on his payroll in the 1970s after DeVito left the band and arranging cameos for him in 1990s films. Pesci also counted American Mafia figure Robert Bisaccia as a childhood friend.

Career

Before he was a screen legend, Joe Pesci spent the 1960s cutting hair and playing guitar. He performed with bands like Joey Dee and the Starliters, the group behind the "Peppermint Twist" craze. In 1968, under the name Joe Ritchie, he released an album of pop covers called Little Joe Sure Can Sing! From 1970 to 1976, he teamed up with Frank Vincent for a comedy act that mixed Abbott and Costello routines with Don Rickles-style insults.

Their Broadway show The New Vaudevillians ran for only a week in 1975. Pesci’s first movie was the 1976 crime film The Death Collector, also starring Vincent. After that, he moved back to The Bronx and lived above Amici’s Restaurant, where he worked. In 1979, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, impressed by The Death Collector, cast him as Joey LaMotta in Raging Bull.

During a fight scene with De Niro, Pesci broke a rib. The role earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and a BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer in 1981. In 1984, he reunited with De Niro in Once Upon a Time in America. The next year, he played detective Rocky Nelson in the short-lived TV series Half Nelson.

In 1988, he appeared in Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker as crime boss Frankie “Mr. Big” LiDeo. He later became Leo Getz, the comedic sidekick in the Lethal Weapon sequels released in 1989, 1992, and 1998.