I Only Know Who I Am When I Am Somebody Else
My Life on the Street, On the Stage, and in the Movies
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Beloved stage and screen actor Danny Aiello’s big-hearted memoir reveals a man of passion, integrity, and guts—and lays bare one of the most unlikely success stories ever told.
Danny Aiello admits that he backed into his acting career by mistake. That’s easy to see when you begin at the beginning: raised by his loving and fiercely resilient mother in the tenements of Manhattan and the South Bronx, and forever haunted by the death of his infant brother, Danny struggled early on to define who he was and who he could be. It wasn’t until he took to the stage in the wee hours to belt out standards that Danny Aiello found his voice and his purpose: he was born to act. Performing in converted churches and touring companies led to supporting roles in such films as The Godfather: Part II and Moonstruck, and an Oscar nomination for his role as the embattled Salvatore in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. For a guy who had never set foot in an acting class, this was supreme validation for being an outsider who followed his heart.
In a raw and real chronicle of his gritty urban past, Danny Aiello looks back with appreciation, amusement, and frank disbelief at his unconventional road to success. He offers candid observations on working with luminary directors Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, and Robert Altman, among others, and a vast roster of actors, including Robert De Niro, Paul Newman, Madonna, Cher, and Lauren Bacall. He opens up about friends he loved, friends he lost, and the professional relationships that weren’t meant to be. Above all, Danny Aiello imparts a life lesson straight out of his own experience to anyone who’s ever felt like an outsider: It’s never too late to become who you want to be, to find happiness and fulfillment, and to embrace the winding road to get there.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With raw honesty, this straightforward account covers an unusual career for an unusual actor. Aiello's life had an unpromising start growing up with a mostly absent father in cold-water New York flats, in a family that "still had one foot in the last century." He was a teenage soldier, a Greyhound baggage handler, a union organizer, and a Bronx pool hustler and small-time thief before his physical presence landed him a job as a bouncer at The Improv comedy club. He parlayed his emcee duties into some stage work and, with the encouragement of friends, started acting, breaking into stage and film work in the early 1970s. His career arguably peaked when he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," which he talks about in a declarative, factual manner. There's little introspection of the actor's craft here, but there are some good stories, including a hilariously ribald account of a dinner at Bea Arthur's house and a catty rift with Lauren Bacall on the set of Robert Altman's "Ready to Wear." Most of all, though, Aiello's sense of his unlikely journey justifies his pride at his hard-won good fortune.
Customer Reviews
a search for self, in all the right places
The words will pull you through the book. You won’t be able to put it down and when you finish you’ll wish there was more. Danny shares with us a world that many of us will never know. This book is more than an enjoyable, entertaining and educational read. It is an experience... and one that imparts much insight. Danny is quite a man and for someone who only knows who he is when he is somebody else, as Danny puts it, the love always shines through. He is a unique combination of toughness and sensitivity. Read it!