06/16/2026
FROM THE BRONX:
Colagero L. “Chazz” Palminteri
Palminteri was born on May 15, 1952, in the Bronx, the son of Rose, a homemaker, and Lorenzo Palminteri, a bus driver.
He was raised in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx. Palminteri is of Sicilian origin, his grandparents, Calogero Palminteri and Rosa Bonfante, married in 1908, immigrated to the United States in 1910 from Menfi in the province of Agrigento, Sicily.
He struggled to become an actor, splitting his time between acting in off-Broadway plays and moonlighting as a bouncer, alongside Dolph Lundgren.
His big break came in 1988 with the premiere of his autobiographical one-man show, A Bronx Tale, which he wrote after being fired from a club for refusing entry to talent agent Swifty Lazar; Robert De Niro later developed and directed a film version (1993).