Joe Pesci is a legendary and multi-talented actor. Pesci is best known for his roles as Jake La Motta’s brother and manager in Raging Bull, Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas, and iconic roles in Home Alone, My Cousin Vinny, and Lethal Weapon, but he hasn’t been seen in a while. These are the real reasons Joe Pesci doesn’t appear in movies.
Pesci left acting in 1999 to pursue his first love, music. Pesci has talent, unlike many actors who make albums or star in Broadway musicals simply because they can. In the 1960s, he played guitar with Joey Dee and the Starliters, but Jimi Hendrix was better. In 1968, he released Little Joe Sure Can Sing! as Joe Ritchie.
He introduced the two musicians who would go on to form the Four Seasons, but his acting career took off, and music was put on hold for the next 30 years.
Following the release of Vincent LaGuardia Gambini Sings Just for You, Pesci announced his retirement. Pesci’s character inspires the title of the novelty project in My Cousin Vinny. What about the album? Rap music.
Socializing can take up a lot of time. Joe Pesci dated Angie Everhart, a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, and actress, in 2000, who was six inches taller and 27 years younger. Pesci proposed to Everhart after seven years (which would make her his fourth wife). They divorced in 2008, less than a year after they were engaged.
De Niro and Pesci get along well. Over the past 40 years, they’ve appeared in several films, including some of their best: Once Upon a Time in America, Raging Bull, Casino, and Goodfellas, which earned Pesci an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Pesci’s only major work since 2000, a cameo in De Niro’s 2006 film The Good Shepherd, was because of their friendship. Pesci has also appeared in Love Ranch and a Snickers commercial from 2011.
Pesci left the show in the late 1990s because he wasn’t enjoying himself anymore. He made few films after 1995’s Casino, and what he was offered couldn’t compete with his best.
Pesci was nominated for Worst Supporting Actor in 1998’s Lethal Weapon 4 for reprising his role as Leo Getz. “I want good movie parts,” Pesci said in 1992.
Pesci has retired, but if the circumstances are favorable, he will play a significant role. He played Angelo Ruggiero, John Gotti’s friend and “enforcer,” in John Travolta’s 2011 Gambino crime family thriller. Pesci gained 30 pounds to play Ruggiero, a massive character.
He was then demoted and given a lower salary. It’s all detailed in Pesci’s $3 million lawsuit against the film’s producers. Despite an undisclosed agreement between Pesci and Fiore Films in 2013, the Gambino project has yet to be filmed.
Pesci had a daughter with model-actress Claudia Haro, whom he married from 1988 to 1992. Haro began acting after her divorce and appeared in four Pesci films. Pesci also backed her up in a bizarre court case.
Haro divorced Pesci and married stuntman Garrett Warren. Things worsened in 1999, just a year before a stranger shot Warren in his Westlake Village, California home.
After years of searching, police discovered Warren’s address and a photograph of him in the trunk of a car during a drug investigation. They discovered that Haro had hired a hitman to murder her ex-husband.
Haro arrived at her 2012 trial with a large entourage, including a nun dressed in white and her second ex-husband, Joe Pesci, dressed in black. Haro was sentenced to 12 years in prison after pleading not guilty. Police searched and interrogated Pesci after a witness claimed he had paid for Haro’s hit on Warren.
Despite safety precautions and a skilled crew, Joe Pesci was injured on two film sets.
Pesci fractured a rib in Raging Bull while fighting Robert De Niro, then shattered the same rib 15 years later in Casino, another Martin Scorsese film. Pesci was nominated for an Academy Award for the former, but he joked that he was tired of being punished for his work and claimed that making bad movies had advantages.
“Great movies mean shattered ribs,” Pesci said at an American Film Institute tribute to Scorsese in 1997.
Because they enjoy golf, some work solely to pay for country club memberships and greens fees. Joe Pesci is that type. Before retiring from acting, he played golf as much as he could. He’s had more time to play his favorite game without being distracted by Hollywood movies.
In 1992, he told the Orange County Register about his identity crisis while performing. He set his ball down on the first tee of a golf course, drew back his club, and paused mid-swing. He walked away from the ball to shake off his bad mood.
“Who was it that hit that golf ball? “Will it be Leo Getz, David Ferry, Tommy, Harry, or Joe?” Pesci alluded to his characters. “I’ve spent so much time being someone else and so little time being myself that I lost track of who I was for an instant.” If Pesci struggled with these challenges at his peak, it’s no surprise he quit acting.
GoodFellas was inducted into the “Guy Movie Hall of Fame” by Pesci and De Niro during Spike TV’s Guys Choice Awards in 2016. Martin Scorsese had been trying for years to make The Irishman, but he wanted De Niro and Pesci to star. “All he says is ‘go f*** yourself,’” said De Niro.
According to Deadline, Pesci turned down The Irishman more than four dozen times before being persuaded by Scorsese in July 2017.
Netflix paid $175 million for the film, dramatizing the disappearance of union chief Jimmy Hoffa and stars De Niro, Al Pacino, and Pesci as real-life crime boss Russell Bufalino.
