I'm very proud of being Italian-American, but people don't realize that the mafia is just this aberration. The real community is built on the working man, the guy who's the cop, the fireman, the truck driver, the bus driver.

The key is you have to keep doing the right thing. Do the right thing and stay around long enough, and you'll keep getting parts. And if you don't, you write your own parts, which I'm lucky to do. It's like anything else: you get hot, you get cold, then you get hot again. You just keep working.

I thought that if no one was going to give me a great part - and it was very difficult to break into film, obviously - then I'd write one myself.

I like playing roulette, I like dice. I grew up with gamblers.

Mental violence is as bad as physical violence. You don't see that very often in movies, so it was a good subject to tackle.

I came here knowing nobody. I worked clubs as a singer and even the doors a few times before I landed some TV roles.

I never worried about becoming typecast. People have said that to me, but I never worried about it. As long as the part is three dimensional, I'm okay with it, whether the role is to play the heavy, the cop.