Dominic Chianese

Actor

• Born: February 24, 1931
• Place of Birth: New York, New York

Contribution: Dominic Chianese is an Emmy Award–nominated actor, best known for playing aging mafia boss Corrado “Junior” Soprano in the hit HBO (Home Box Office) series The Sopranos.

Background

Dominic Chianese was born on February 24, 1931, in New York City’s Bronx borough. His father, Gaetano “Tony” Chianese, was a bricklayer who recruited his young son to help with the family business. Chianese worked at his father’s side throughout his youth. He attended the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn College and completed a stint in the Marine Reserves. As he entered adulthood, Chianese began contemplating a very different career path than his father’s.

As a young man, Chianese developed a passion for singing, something for which he seemed to have a natural talent. Though he had often considered pursuing a career as a professional singer, he doubted his blue-collar father would approve and pushed the idea from his mind. At the age of twenty, while riding a bus with his father to their next job site, Chianese saw a newspaper ad for auditions for an upcoming Gilbert and Sullivan musical production and spontaneously asked his father if he could go to the audition instead of laying bricks that day. When his father said yes, Chianese unwittingly embarked on what was to be the beginning of a long and successful career in the entertainment industry.

Career

After securing a role in the Gilbert and Sullivan play, Chianese continued performing on stage, appearing in a wide variety of musical and dramatic shows for the next twenty years. In time, his acting skills caught the attention of some important players in Hollywood. He landed his first film role, a small part in the 1972 comedy Fuzz, starring Burt Reynolds.

Chianese’s most important break came two years later when he played gangster Johnny Ola in Francis Ford Coppola’sThe Godfather: Part II. Though the role was relatively small, it was crucial to Chianese’s blossoming film career because it established his flair for playing mobsters and it also provided the opportunity to work with actor Al Pacino who Chianese worked with in a number of other films including Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and . . . And Justice for All (1979).

Chianese seemed to focus more on television work after taking on the recurring role of Alexei Vartova on the daytime soap opera Ryan’s Hope from 1980–81. He resumed his interest in films with an appearance in 1990’s Q & A and then enjoyed a consistent film and television career during which he played roles in films such as Out for Justice (1991), The Contenders (1993), and Night Falls on Manhattan (1996), as well as several appearances on the popular television series Law & Order.

In the late 1990s, as television producer David Chase was preparing to begin filming an HBO-backed series about a modern New Jersey organized crime family called The Sopranos, he was looking for an actor to play Corrado “Junior” Soprano, the patriarch and newly crowned boss of the Soprano family. When Chase saw Chianese’s performance in the 1996 television movie Gotti, he knew he had found the right man for the role. Chianese accepted the role and played Uncle Junior throughout the entire six-season run of the series, battling his nephew Tony Soprano for control of the family and gradually succumbing to the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. The Sopranos proved to be a huge success and made Chianese’s character a household name.

On the strength of his Sopranos work, Chianese earned numerous film and television roles, most notably on the HBO series Boardwalk Empire from 2011–13 playing Leander Cephas Whitlock, a contemporary of former Atlantic City political boss Commodore Louis Kaestner and rival to current boss Enoch “Nucky” Thompson. Chianese also guest starred as Judge Michael Marx on the Golden Globe and Emmy Award–winning crime drama The Good Wife from 2012 to 2015. Chianese also returned to film work playing the role of Don Mimino in the 2013 action comedy The Family, starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, and in the 2017 dramedy Active Adults.

Chianese starred as Enzo Napolitano on NBC’s The Village, which debuted in the spring of 2019. The ensemble drama followed the residents of a Brooklyn apartment building where “everyone is family,” and Chianese earned positive reviews for his performance on the show as a willful, eighty-seven-year-old widower who has moved out of a nursing home to live with his grandson, a law school student, in a rent-controlled apartment.

In 2022, he played the title role in a short film entitled The Old Guitarist. The following year, he returned to his musical roots when he recorded "If I'd Never Seen the Sunshine" with the band Alabama 3, the British musical group most famous for writing and recording "Woke Up This Morning," the opening track from The Sopranos series.

Impact

Although Chianese’s acting and performing career spans more than fifty years, it was his portrayal of Uncle Junior on The Sopranos that propelled the veteran actor to his highest professional level, earning him two Emmy Award nominations for best supporting actor and two Screen Actors Guild awards for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series. The role solidified his reputation as a capable character actor and a versatile performer.

Personal Life

Chianese has been married twice, most recently to Jane Pittson in 2003. He has six children and numerous grandchildren. One son, Dominic Chianese Jr. followed his father’s footsteps and is a successful actor. He appeared alongside Chianese in several episodes of The Sopranos .

Outside of acting, Chianese has also been a committed philanthropist. Early in his career, he provided guitar lessons to women at rehabilitation centers and in more recent years he has performed for elderly nursing home residents.

Bibliography

“Appendix D: A Conversation with Dominic Chianese, The Sopranos’ Uncle Junior.” The Essential Sopranos Reader. Ed. David Lavery. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2011. 339–62. Print.

Argetsinger, Amy, and Roxanne Roberts. “Celebvocate: Dominic Chianese, Uncle Junior of ‘Sopranos,’ Brings Music to Nursing Homes.” Washington Post. Washington Post, 14 May 2012. Web. 18 June 2013.

“Downstage Center with Dominic Chianese.” Downstage Center. American Theatre Wing, 31 Dec. 2004. Web. 1 Aug 2013.

Goldberg, Lesley. “‘Boardwalk Empire’” Adds ‘Sopranos’ Mentor Dominic Chianese.” Hollywood Reporter. Hollywood Reporter, 16 Aug 2011. Web. 18 June 2013.

Richards, Will. "Woke Up This Morning: In conversation with Alabama 3 and Dominic Chianese." Rolling Stone UK, 11 Sept. 2023, www.rollingstone.co.uk/music/features/woke-up-this-morning-in-conversation-with-alabama-3-and-dominic-chianese-32614/. Accessed 16 Sept. 2024.

Zoller Seitz, Matt. “Dominic Chianese Is Best Known as ‘Uncle Junior,’ But He’s a Musician at Heart.” Star-Ledger. New Jersey On-Line, 2 Dec. 1999. Web. 18 June 2013.