Biography
New York-based character actor John Ventimiglia has built his career playing thugs, guards, cops, and other tough guys in television and movies. He guest starred on crime dramas like Law & Order and
NYPD Blue until 1999, when he joined the cast of
The Sopranos as Artie Bucco, the proprietor of the Nuovo Vesuvio restaurant and close personal friend of Tony Soprano. The Artie Bucco character name was used by HBO to sell a whole line of products (pasta sauce, cookbooks, etc.) to promote the show. His film career has been more low-key, mostly made up of small roles in independent dramas. In 1995, he played the stable father Andrew in
Rebecca Miller's directorial debut,
Angela. The next year, he had brief parts in four popular independent films:
I Shot Andy Warhol,
Girls Town,
Trees Lounge, and
The Funeral. He then co-starred in the crime comedy
On the Run, opposite fellow
Sopranos cast member
Michael Imperioli, and appeared in
King of the World, the made-for-TV movie about
Muhammad Ali. Turning to voice acting, he narrated both the documentary
The Art of Amália and
Rebecca Miller's
Personal Velocity. In 2002, he joined up with several other New York actors and writers for DV Workshop, a feature film collection of 24 short films for the Internet. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide