Chazz Palminteri

Actor, writer and director Chazz Palminteri wrote his own ticket to the top with his one-man stage play "A Bronx Tale," an Italian-American coming of age story that wooed movie studios and Robert De Niro, who directed the 1993 screen adaptation. Palminteri's starring film role as a Mafia boss set the tone for his subsequent film career, where he lent dimension to streetwise characters, like the undiscovered literary genius behind a craps-shooting bodyguard in "Bullets Over Broadway" (1994), for which he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. His soft-hearted tough guys were offset by staunch law enforcement officials and conflicted working-class Joes in acclaimed indies "The Usual Suspects" (1995) and "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints" (2006), while his incredibly timeless "character" face made him a fedora-sporting favorite in neo-noirs like "Mulholland Falls" (1996). Unfortunately, Hollywood was not willing to cast Palminteri as anything other than a mob boss, gambler or tough cop, and while he was sometimes reduced to sending up his image in low-brow comedies like "Little Man" (2006) his better, later performances came thanks to independent film directors who had faith in the stage-trained actor's ability to portray a wider range of characters.