Joe Pantoliano: ‘I saw acting as a way of making a living out of lying’

The Matrix and Bad Boys actor on growing up in the New Jersey projects, his love of Ginger Rogers and Margaret Rutherford, and dodging the Vietnam war

Detention

I grew up functionally illiterate. In most urban communities you were just pushed to the side and disregarded, so long as you were quiet. I was evaluated and told I had a third-grade reading level. I was frustrated and ashamed that I couldn’t fit in and comprehend the work, so I turned my back on it all. The teachers would say: “Did you do your homework?” I would say: “No, I didn’t.” I frightened them into leaving me alone. I spent the last three years of high school in detention because I didn’t fit the mould.

In 2009, I was diagnosed with clinical depression and wanted to kill myself. It all came from these childhood experiences. I was completely confused as a result of all of the success and wealth that I had accumulated, and all the dreams that I had had as a young man, living in poverty with undiagnosed clinical depression and dyslexia. Nowadays, I have an organisation called No Kidding! Me 2!!, that aims to stamp out the stigma of mental illness.

Frank Sinatra

I am from Hoboken, New Jersey, a small town on the Hudson River with the monolith of Manhattan staring us down. You can see the Empire State Building – it’s a seven-minute subway ride away. Frank Sinatra grew up on the same block. Sinatra was a waterline: if he could get out of town, could I? I had no education or sports. But showbiz and acting? Sinatra did both of those things.

I remember, age 12, having the cognitive understanding that I would cease to exist at some point, and there would be no evidence that I ever existed. I had this idea of wanting to get inside the 12-inch black-and-white TV in my mother’s bedroom, to not only get out of my poverty and get away, but to be remembered. If I could be inside that TV, in showbusiness, like the characters I saw in those old movies, then I would be immortal.

The Million Dollar Movie channel

The Million Dollar Movie channel showed old black-and-white films as a cheap way to put on content. I loved Fred Astaire and I was in love with Ginger Rogers. I had an enormous crush on her. I still do. None of the women or girls in my neighbourhood looked like Rogers. So she was my ideal.

I loved Margaret Rutherford, the British actor who first played Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, in the floppy hat. She was so charming and interesting to look at. She did a film called Blithe Spirit, based on the Noël Coward play, with Rex Harrison, where she plays a tarot reader who can talk to the dead. It was hysterically funny and so different from anything I had seen before. I really admired Montgomery Clift and Alec Guinness. I’d watch Harpo Marx and Lou Costello and think: “Wow, they’re fun. They make me laugh. I’d like to do that kind of work.”

Swag

We couldn’t afford stuff, so there was huge excitement shoplifting food or socks and not getting caught. I didn’t know this at the time, but disease and emotional distress is treated with risky behaviours: shoplifting, alcohol, sex or drugs. In the mid-60s, a lot of our musical entertainers made drug culture palatable, sexy and exciting. I mean, I don’t have to tell you what 60s England was like.

In my neighbourhood, people loved to buy what they called “swag” – stolen without a gun. I would go to Orchard Street in New York and buy these popular T-shirts with big stripes for $2, go back to Hoboken and sell them out of the trunk of someone’s car – I didn’t have one. It was very exotic to sell stolen stuff out of the trunk of a car so I would say they were stolen and sell them for five bucks, making $3 a shirt.

The Herbert Berghof studio

I did a high school play, Up the Down Staircase, in my senior year in 1970, just shy of my 19th birthday. It was very similar to what I was going through: going against the grain, going up the down staircase, not wanting help and yet standing out to get help. I just remember how much fun I had. I liked the way the lights felt so you couldn’t see the audience. During one of my speeches, I could hear people crying. I was so taken aback, I started to sob. It was a feeling I’d never experienced before, and one I’ve been chasing for the last 45 years.

My two teachers, Donna Damiano and John Fredericks, said: “You have a real aptitude for this, and it can be a career path. But if you want to be an actor, you need to learn how to read.” So I made a deal: they’d pass me if I started going to acting school while I was still in high school. I signed up to the Herbert Berghof studio in the West Village, an easy subway ride to class, and spent 10 years learning the business.


The Vietnam war

Being a teenager is the most miserable time: it’s a miracle if you can get through it. I have four kids and I don’t know any parent that doesn’t have struggling moments. You have to be lucky to dodge some kind of terrible, mind-bending, traumatic event that will mould you for the rest of your life.

I dodged the Vietnam war by the dumb luck of it being turned into a lottery system, based on your birthday, and my number not getting pulled. In 1970, I was 19 years old, there was a war, we had a corrupt president and a lot of college kids were on demonstrations. There was a lot going on.

I grew up in the projects, where the state helps you with affordable housing and food stamps. My parents were terrible gamblers on the numbers [Italian lottery] and the horses, so they were always broke. We went through a lot of evictions. I remember them turning off the heat and shutting off the phone. So I’ve always been very frugal and frightened about going broke.

As a young man, I lied my way out of all kinds of situations: my dog ate the homework, I was very good at that. So acting seemed a natural segue into a future where you could make a living out of lying. There’s an old saying: the most important thing about acting is sincerity. Once you learn to fake that, you got it made.

• Joe Pantoliano’s new film, From the Vine, is on download now

Contributor

As told to Rich Pelley

The GuardianTramp

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