Joe Pesci is a legendary and versatile character actor. Pesci played Jake La Motta’s brother and manager in Raging Bull, Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas, and iconic roles in Home Alone, My Cousin Vinny, and Lethal Weapon, but he hasn’t been seen much lately. That’s funny? How’s it funny? These are the true reasons Joe Pesci isn’t in movies.
Pesci quit acting in 1999 to pursue music, his first love. Pesci has talent, unlike many actors who make albums or star in Broadway musicals because they can. He played guitar with Joey Dee and the Starliters in the 1960s, but Jimi Hendrix was better. He released Little Joe Sure Can Sing! as Joe Ritchie in 1968.
He introduced the two musicians who would become the Four Seasons, but his acting career took off and music was put on hold for 30 years. Pesci retired following Vincent LaGuardia Gambini Sings Just for You’s release. The novelty project’s title comes from Pesci’s My Cousin Vinny character. The album? Rap song.
Socializing can be time-consuming. Joe Pesci dated Sports Illustrated swimsuit model and actress Angie Everhart in 2000, who was six inches taller and 27 years younger. After seven years, Pesci proposed to Everhart (which would make her his fourth wife). They divorced in 2008, little than a year after being engaged.
De Niro and Pesci are tight. They’ve starred in several movies together over the past 40 years, including some of their best: Once Upon a Time in America, Raging Bull, Casino, and Goodfellas, which won Pesci the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. (5-word acceptance speech) “My honor. Thanks “) Pesci’s only major work since 2000, a cameo in De Niro’s 2006 film The Good Shepherd, was due to his friendship with him. Pesci also appeared in Love Ranch and a 2011 Snickers commercial.
Pesci retired in the late 1990s because he wasn’t feeling it anymore. After 1995’s Casino, he made few pictures, and what he was offered couldn’t compare to his best. 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag? Gone Fishin’? In 1998’s Lethal Weapon 4, Pesci was nominated for Worst Supporting Actor for playing Leo Getz again. In 1992, Pesci said: “I want good movie parts. Starring in bad movies doesn’t help. That’s fatal.”
Pesci has retired, but if the circumstances are right, he’ll play a huge role. He was cast as Angelo Ruggiero, John Gotti’s friend and “enforcer,” in a 2011 Gambino crime family thriller starring John Travolta. Pesci gained 30 pounds to play Ruggiero, a huge person. He was then demoted and offered less money. Pesci’s $3 million lawsuit against the film’s producers details it. The Gambino project hasn’t been filmed, even though Pesci and Fiore Films made an undisclosed agreement in 2013.
Pesci married model-actress Claudia Haro from 1988 until 1992 and had a daughter. After the divorce, Haro started acting and performed in four Pesci films. Pesci also supported her in a weird court case.
Haro married stuntman Garrett Warren after divorcing Pesci. In 1999, just a year before Warren was shot by a stranger at his Westlake Village, California home, things worsened. After years of searching, police found directions to Warren’s house and his photo in the trunk of a car during a drug investigation and discovered that Haro had hired a hitman to kill her ex-husband. (She hired another hitman to finish it.)
Haro brought a large entourage to her 2012 trial, including a nun in white and her second ex-husband, Joe Pesci, in black. Haro received a 12-year sentence after pleading no guilty. Pesci was examined and searched by police after a witness strongly claimed that he had paid for Haro’s hit on Warren.
Joe Pesci was injured on two film shoots despite safety procedures and skilled staff.
Pesci cracked a rib in Raging Bull while fighting Robert De Niro, then 15 years later, he shattered the same rib in Casino, another Martin Scorsese film. Pesci was nominated for an Academy Award for the former, but he joked about being tired of suffering for his work and claimed that making poor movies had its advantages. “Great movies mean shattered ribs,” Pesci said at a 1997 American Film Institute ceremony honoring Scorsese. “The Super and Jimmy Hollywood kept me safe.”
Some people work simply to pay for country club memberships and greens fees because they enjoy golf so much. Joe Pesci may be the type. He played golf as often as he could before retiring from acting. He’s had more time to play his favorite game without Hollywood movies interfering.
After Raging Bull, Pesci turned down many movies and turned to golf. He told New York he golfed daily to stay sane (via Turner Classic Movies). He played with Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, and John Daly. The actor’s handicap is 15.9.
The “jukebox musical” was Broadway’s largest trend in the early 2000s, using pre-existing songs by a single band or singer to tell their story. Mamma Mia! (ABBA), Good Vibrations (Beach Boys), and Jersey Boys (Four Seasons’ ascent) are famous examples. Jersey Boys, the 2005 Broadway musical and 2014 Clint Eastwood film, relied on Pesci.
Pesci played a role in the Four Seasons’ formation but didn’t act in either show. He introduced musician pal Tommy DeVito to songwriter Bob Gaudio, starting the band. “Funny how?” asks Joe Pesci (Joseph Russo) when he’s called “funny.” — a reference to Pesci’s Goodfellas character “Tommy DeVito.”
Acting’s odd. Psychological make-believe is when actors become a character on the page and repress their own identities to bring them to life. It’s obvious that such a process might mess with an actor’s mentality, especially for dedicated actors like Joe Pesci, who played dark and tormented characters.
He told the Orange County Register (through the Baltimore Sun) in 1992 about his identity struggle while performing. On the first tee of a golf course, he placed down his ball, drew back his club, and paused mid-swing. He left the ball to shake off his bad mood.
“Who was hitting that golf ball? Leo Getz, David Ferry, Tommy, Harry, or Joe?” Pesci mentioned his characters. “I’ve spent so much time as somebody else and so little as myself, I lost sight of who I was for an instant.” It’s no wonder Pesci quit acting if he was struggling with these challenges during his height.
Pesci and De Niro inducted GoodFellas into the “Guy Movie Hall of Fame” during Spike TV’s Guys Choice Awards in 2016. Martin Scorsese had been attempting to make The Irishman for years, but he wanted De Niro and Pesci to star. “All he says is ‘go f*** yourself,’” De Niro stated.
Pesci turned down The Irishman more than four dozen times, but Scorsese was able to convince him in July 2017, according to Deadline. Netflix paid $175 million for the picture, which dramatizes union chief Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance and stars De Niro, Al Pacino, and Pesci as real-life crime boss Russell Bufalino.
