Watch the Casino movie trailer for the film starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone. Directed by Martin Scorcese, Casino tells the story of sports handicapper Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal in mob-run Las Vegas during the 1970's. However, for one user in the thread, the brutal murder of Joe Pesci’s character and his brother in 1995 epic Casino was the most scarring. The scene sees Pesci forced to watch as his brother is beaten almost to death by a gang of baseball bat-wielding goons and is then beaten himself, with both of them subsequently buried alive. It’s the famous scene where Jake La Motta (De Niro) has finally lost his patience with Joey (Joe Pesci). In the scene Joey gets a rather brash beating and, in real life, breaks his rib. Well, 15 years later, when Pesci is being bundled into his grave with his dead brother, he breaks the exact same rib.

By/Oct. 28, 2020 10:19 am EST

'A mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma' is not only one of the most memorable quotes from Oliver Stone's JFK but also an apt description for the actor who delivered it: Oscar winner Joe Pesci. Anyone who's been to the movies in the last four decades 'knows' Joe Pesci from his most memorable screen performances: streetwise, fast-talking, and volcanic-tempered ('Am I a clown?') in films like Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980), Goodfellas (1992) and Casino (1995), irascible and tenacious in Home Alone (1992) and the Lethal Weapon franchise. Pesci's screen persona is so indelible that it's almost become an adjective: when Snickers wanted an immediately identifiable visual cue to sum up the short fuse that comes with being 'hangry,' they tapped him.

The problem with 'knowing' Pesci through his screen work is that the actor seems to work overtime to be unknown, avoiding not only any comparison to his best-known roles, but also leaving no footprint in the public arena. A notoriously reticent interview who gave what is possibly the shortest acceptance speech in Oscar history, Pesci defied industry expectations by turning his back on Hollywood just as it elevated him to leading man status (admittedly, in lackluster projects like Gone Fishin'). At the height of his fame, he retired from acting and focused on what might be the last artistic endeavor anyone would expect from Pesci: music. And even after netting his third Oscar nomination for a 'comeback' project — Scorsese's The Irishman — Pesci again faded from view after the acclaim, leaving more questions in his wake. Is there any way to unravel the riddle-wrapped mystery of Joe Pesci? Here are a few clues that might shed some light.

Introducing Little Joe

Born Joseph Frank Pesci on February 9, 1943 in Newark, New Jersey, Pesci started his uncomfortable relationship with the spotlight at an early age. His father, Angelo, worked multiple blue-collar jobs, and sought to spare Pesci and his two siblings from a similar future. Show business was seen as their ticket to a better life, and by the time he was five years old, Pesci was performing on stage and on Star Time Kids, a television variety series that aired on New York's WNBT (now WNBC) from 1950 to 1955. The experience was, by Pesci's own description, less than pleasurable: in a 1992 interview with the New York Times, he said, 'I grew up in the business. I had no choice.' He added that he didn't think it was right to be pushed into entertainment, and if given the choice, he would have done something 'more calming, in a different area where I did not have to use my emotions.'

The total entertainmer

Though Pesci was less than enthused about performing, it kept him afloat during his pre-fame days. Pesci sang and played guitar in a string of pop and rock acts, most notably in the touring version of the popular New York act Joey Dee and the Starliters, which provided him with his first feature film appearance as an extra in the band's star vehicle, Hey, Let's Twist! (1961). It's worth noting that after Pesci's departure, both Jimi Hendrix and Charles Neville of the Neville Brothers held down his guitar spot in the group.

Pesci then made his bid for solo pop stardom in 1968 with the release of Little Joe Sure Can Sing! But the LP, which features Pesci covering songs by the Beatles and Bee Gees in a perfectly acceptable voice (that sounds more than a bit like his childhood friend, Frankie Valli), was not a hit, and he returned to gigging, this time with another Jersey musician, Frank Vincent. But live music on the club circuit was out of fashion in the early '70s, and the pair turned to comedy as a duo, Vincent and Pesci. Decades after they hung up the act, Vincent would remain Pesci's friend off-camera and frequent nemesis on film: Pesci brutalized Vincent in Raging Bull and buried him alive in Goodfellas, while Vincent returned the favor by bashing in Pesci's skull in Casino.

How to make a mobster

In 1975, Pesci made another bid for fame by co-starring in The Death Collector (also known as Family Enforcer), a low-budget Mafia thriller with Joe Cortese (Green Room) and Pesci as strong-arm types for the Mob, and Frank Vincent as their first target. Solid reviews from the New York Times, among others, prompted Pesci to head to Hollywood. But he found few takers there, and by 1978, Pesci was back in New York and working as a manager for Amici, a restaurant in the Bronx. And it was at this low point that Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro came calling; the director and star had seen Pesci in Death Collector and sought him out to play Joey LaMotta, the brother, manager, and eventual bane of boxer Jake LaMotta's existence. Critical response was overwhelmingly positive for Pesci's performance, and an Oscar nomination in 1981 seemed to all but confirm that he was destined for lasting fame. Or so one would think.

Mr. Wonderful

Think about Joe Pesci's film career for a moment: what immediately comes to mind? The Scorsese collaborations, for sure. Home Alone, My Cousin Vinny, and his three Lethal Weapon movies. If you're a real movie buff: JFK, and maybe even Easy Money. Now take a look at Pesci's credits on IMDb, and you'll see that he worked steadily between Raging Bull in 1980 and Lethal Weapon 4 in 1998. If you're an omnivorous movie watcher, a handful of these might be familiar to you: Pesci had a small role opposite De Niro in the legendary Sergio Leone's last film, Once Upon a Time in America, and co-starred as (you guessed it) a mobster in the De Niro-helmed A Bronx Tale.

Many of his credits, however, are most likely to be total obscurities to you. Did you know that in 1983, Pesci starred as a bowling alley owner with dreams of stardom in the West German musical Dear Mr. Wonderful? Or co-starred in Man on Fire — not the Denzel Washington action thriller, but the 1987 Italian/French film on which it's based? It's most likely that in 1989, you didn't see Pesci's turns as American author John Dos Passos in The Legendary Life of Ernest Hemingway, or a thinly veiled Weegee, the legendary photographer, in 1992's The Public Eye. The takeaway? Pesci's hits are very, very big, and his misses disappear, with little in between.

Half Baked

Pesci has given few, if any interviews since announcing his retirement, so his reasons for the decision remain solely with him. However, it's possible that he simply lost his taste for the projects that were being offered to him. As far back as 1992, Pesci told the New York Times that many of the roles brought to him were 'stupid, ethnic Italian parts' with 'pizza-pie stupid jokes.' And while he mostly avoided that characterization in his film work, Pesci did withstand a barrage of jokes about his height (he's 5'5') in the dismal NBC action-comedy Half Nelson.

Pesci was top-billed as Rocky Nelson, an NYPD detective who works for a private security firm while trying to launch an acting career. The series, co-created by Glen A. Larson (Battlestar Galactica), paired Pesci with former football greats Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith as security team members, Saturday Night Live alum Victoria Jac

Casino Joe Pesci Death Scene