Joe Pantoliano¶
At a glance¶
- Born
- September 12, 1951, Hoboken, New Jersey
- Role
- Ralph Cifaretto, 2001–2002
- Emmy
- Supporting Actor, 2003
- Known for
- The Fugitive, Memento, The Matrix, Risky Business
Before¶
A long, prolific career as one of American cinema's most reliable weasels: Guido the Killer Pimp in Risky Business, Cypher in The Matrix, Teddy in Memento, Deputy Marshal Renfro in The Fugitive, plus Bad Boys, Midnight Run, and The Goonies.
Hoboken-born, and he arrived at The Sopranos already an expert in playing men you shouldn't turn your back on.
Ralph¶
He joined in season three, two seasons in, and had to establish a character who could plausibly be the show's most repellent figure in a cast that already included several murderers.
The performance's trick is that Ralph is funny — a Gladiator obsessive doing bits, mugging, entertaining himself — and then, without a change of gear, beats a young woman to death in a parking lot in "University."
Pantoliano plays the cruelty and the clowning as the same appetite, which is why the character is so unpleasant to be around. There's no dividing line.
His best work is "Whoever Did This" (S4E48), where his son's injury strips the performance off entirely for one episode, and Ralph becomes genuinely and unbearably sympathetic — shortly before Tony kills him in a kitchen.
He won the 2003 Emmy for Supporting Actor — for a season in which the character had been dead since episode nine.
He has said he found Ralph genuinely unpleasant to live inside and was not sorry to be done.
After¶
Steady character work — The Sopranos remains the peak — plus Bad Boys II, Sense8, and Bad Boys for Life.
More significantly, he has become a prominent mental health advocate. He was diagnosed with clinical depression, wrote about it in two memoirs, and founded No Kidding, Me Too!, an organization working to reduce stigma around mental illness in the entertainment industry. He has directed a documentary on the subject.
Given that he won his Emmy for a series built on a man in therapy, the second career has a certain symmetry.