By Aaron Hillis
If New York-born actor (and sometime writer/director) Chazz Palminteri were just a decade older, he probably would've been an Italian-American staple in the '70s films of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. Instead, during that time he studied at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg, then made his way to off-Broadway and TV shows in the '80s before writing the 1988 play "A Bronx Tale" that would eventually be adapted for the screen as Robert De Niro's directorial debut and offer him his breakout movie role. Now one of the most prominent Italian-American actors working today, Palminteri currently stars as the titular Vegas shark in "Yonkers Joe," an entertaining drama about a con man whose seedy world of palming dice, cheating casinos, and conning any poor sucker is uprooted when he's forced to look after his adult son with Down's syndrome. I took a
Aaron Hillis

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