My family is my life, and everything else comes second as far as what's important to me.
Michael Imperioli
I do smoke in real life. A lot. We're all smoking right now in fact.
When you're going through these difficult times of chaos and trauma, the most important thing is to keep those who are closest to you together.
When I was young, you went to school, dealt with your friends and drama, went home, did your homework, went to bed, and started over the next day. But that social interaction that happens at school doesn't end now - it goes until the minute you go to bed and starts again when you wake up.
One of my early money mistakes was getting fired from the first acting job I ever had. I was cast in a play as the lead, and I got fired three nights after the open.
I didn't start making a real living until eight or nine years in. Even after 'Goodfellas' came out, I was still working as a waiter, and people would recognize me - that was an odd experience. But when 'The Sopranos' hit, that was like an exponential leap.
To be at acting school, it was kind of the first time you felt the freedom to be as much of yourself as you wanted. People weren't going to judge you.
I think a lot of people who didn't know my work before 'The Sopranos' think I came from the Jersey Shore, like they picked us out of the mall and put us on television.
I would never put on a Mets hat. Only if I was playing a Met as part of the job. Which, actually, I did a long time ago.
I've been working professionally as an actor since I was 20. That's going to be 25 years soon. So, that's a veteran. That's a big-time veteran. I've had some great successes, and I've had some not-successes.
Everybody I play probably has some Italian in them.
I like working with people I know and feel a kinship to.
'Pitchfork' said something like, 'Michael Imperioli wrote a book that sounds like Lou Reed fan fiction,' which maybe it is. It's fiction, and I'm a fan. But it's not about me, and it's not a Lou Reed book.
In this world, there really is a law of cause and effect: You reap what you sow. Then energy you put out really does come back to you.
I played guitar in a band from when I was about 20 for three years. Then I sang a little. Then I started getting really busy as an actor and forgot about it.
There's too many actors in LA. I mean, I'll go out there from time to time, but I always find it pretty soul-destroying. I don't drive, and the people kind of rub me the wrong way. It's just not home. You know? It's not New York. It's not... my town.
Spike Lee is not the first name you would probably think about redoing 'Oldboy.'
When I read the pilot of 'The Sopranos,' I wasn't terribly blown away by it.
But James Gandolfini and Edie Falco, they did such great work, especially in the last show.
There's a whole network of people, particularly in New York, obviously, that came up through the Spike Lee School. I'm one of them. That's big!
I love fiction and read novels constantly.
John Ventimiglia, who was on 'The Sopranos,' was in my first acting class and we have been friends since that time. Alec Baldwin was in my class back then, Sean Young and Andrew McCarthy.
I think people always thought I was more of a Guido than I am.
There's an intelligence that goes with being a good cop. Intuitiveness - they have to be actors; they have to have deductive reasoning, knowledge about a great deal of subjects.
When you get made into the Mafia, they cut, prick your finger. And they take the blood and put it on the picture of a saint. Then they burn it. That's the Mafia induction ceremony.
Being on a TV show is a really good gig for an actor.
'Detroit 1-8-7' - the numbers are police slang for murder - is filmed in that blue-collar Michigan city, providing a flavor of authenticity. Detroit offers a unique visual landscape that tells the story of the city and what it's been through.
In Britain you're more used to challenging drama. In America, TV is just boring, and numbing, and bloody terrible.
Back 20 years ago, there was a division between movie actors and TV actors. That's kind of gone away. People who have had a lot of success in movies in the past now want to be on TV. There used to be much more of a quality division between TV and movies, and that's kind of not the case anymore.
I'd go for parts that didn't pay a dime, and there would be 300 to 400 actors there. It could be very discouraging. To make it in this business, you have to have a kind of dumb sense that you're really good. You have to believe that someone is going to recognize that.
I have a background writing screenplays and teleplays. I've tried to write prose and fiction but never really completed anything I thought worthy of publication or worthy of anyone else to even look at.
Not to toot our own horn, but when 'The Sopranos' was on, it was as good as any movie that was coming out in the theater. I think that goes for a lot of shows today.
Detroit is a city that really stands out. It's been through a very difficult time. There's been a lot of pain here, and the city, physically, has suffered. You can see it in certain neighborhoods, and there's buildings downtown that have been abandoned.
I've played some gangster roles, but that's obviously not me. When you're an Italian-American New York actor, it's just an easy way to get cast.
It doesn't really matter to me how people see me.
My goal as an actor was just to be somebody very human. I'm not really interested in playing a character who is particularly cool and everything he does looks great and turns out great.
At one point, I got to work as an assistant for Martin Scorsese: He wanted to know about all the films coming out, so I would make clippings and put it all in a big scrapbook for him. I was also in charge of his video library - it was like a little video store, and his friends and colleagues would come and borrow films.
With screenplays and teleplays, they are mapped, really, in the blueprint of a finished product, which is something you're going to watch on a screen. But a book is an end to itself, really.
I don't know if I would have had the same career had I not done 'GoodFellas.' Probably not. Would I have been cast on 'The Sopranos?' Who knows if there would have been a 'Sopranos?'
I enjoy playing characters who are struggling, particularly with themselves.
