• January 18, 1999
• Vol. 51
• No. 2

All That Chazz

By Kyle Smith

Driven Actor-Writer-Dad Chazz Palminteri Works Hard for His Hyphens

Onscreen, where Chazz Palminteri has been cast in such roles as a gangster (A Bronx Tale), a hard-nosed cop (The Usual Suspects) and a cokehead (Hurlyburly), he curses more than he prays. But in real life the soft-spoken actor met his wife at church. Or would have, if he had had the nerve to speak. Once an underemployed actor who used to beg God during Catholic mass, "If you do the right thing by me, I'll do the right thing by you," he saw his dream woman at an L.A. church in 1990. "I wanted to say something," he says, "but I felt embarrassed." Driving away, he says, "I started banging on the steering wheel—'Why didn't I say something?' " Days later his prayers were answered when he saw her at a nightclub. "We have never been apart since," says Palminteri.

Now Gianna Ranaudo-Palminteri, a 33-old actress, and Chazz, 52, are putting his 1997 cancer scare behind them and raising their son, Dante, 3 (the first of more kids, they hope), while Palminteri juggles acting and screenwriting duties. It helps to have friends in high places, and not just on Sunday. Take friend Sean Penn, his costar in Hurlyburly, a Hollywood satire in which Palminteri plays a lowlife actor who pushes Meg Ryan out of a moving car (Gianna plays his wife). "As warm and kind as he is, I'm glad he's on my side," says Penn, alluding to the hotheads Palminteri plays in movies. "He's a good friend," adds Robert De Niro, who directed the film of Palminteri's one-man play A Bronx Tale. "We can talk about stuff. There's a Yiddish word for it: kibitzing."

Calogero Lorenzo Palminteri learned about community in New York's tough Bronx, where his dad, Lorenzo, 79, who now lives with homemaker wife Rose, 78, in Coral Springs, Fla., drove buses when Chazz was growing up with his sisters. (Rose Pascarelli is a Manhattan travel agent; Mary Kaufman is an adjunct professor in Tampa.) After squeaking through high school ("I would make girls do my homework"), Palminteri tried singing and studied acting. He moved to L.A. in 1986 and that year landed a guest shot on Hill Street Blues. But the TV gig led nowhere; later, a job as a bouncer fell through. "I had no money in the bank," he recalls. "I started to cry. And then I remembered my dad, who always told me the saddest thing in life is wasted talent."

That set Palminteri to writing and starring in A Bronx Tale, the 1989 Off-Broadway play based on his childhood. The 1993 film version earned him $1.5 million. Two years after that he earned an Oscar nomination for Woody Allen's Bullets over Broadway. "Gianna and I were watching television," he recalls, "and it was like, 'Holy God, I got nominated!' Then two hours later the hospital called and told us my wife was pregnant. What a day that was!" Father and son today romp around the Palminteri' four-bedroom house in Colts Neck, N.J. (The family is building a 9,000-square-foot spread in Westchester County, N.Y.) "He's the best father, and he wants to do" everything perfectly," says Gianna.

But their perfect home life was shaken in 1997 when a masseuse found a bump on his neck that turned out to be a malignant growth. Palminteri couldn't believe it. "I said, 'What? What?' " The cancer was removed and has not recurred. But it's one reason Palminteri stays busy (he's costarring with Billy Crystal and De Niro in the comedy Analyze This and just wrote a film about Dion and the Belmonts). "He does a lot, you know?" says De Niro. "He does more than I can."

"I spent the first half of my life being lazy, and finally I woke up and said I'm not going to waste my talent," says Palminteri. "Ever since that day I've tried to be as productive as lean."

Kyle Smith
Sue Miller in Colts Neck

• Contributors:
• Sue Miller.