My family is my life, and everything else comes second as far as what's important to me.
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.
'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.
I like working with people I know and feel a kinship to.
Spike Lee is not the first name you would probably think about redoing 'Oldboy.'
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
Being on a TV show is a really good gig for an actor.
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.
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 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.
In Britain you're more used to challenging drama. In America, TV is just boring, and numbing, and bloody terrible.
