Chazz Palminteri

Calogero Lorenzo “Chazz” Palminteri (born May 15, 1952)[1] is an American actor, screenwriter, producer and playwright. He is best known for his Academy Award–nominated performance in Bullets Over Broadway, the 1993 film A Bronx Tale, based on his play of the same name, and his recurring role as Shorty in Modern Family.

Palminteri was born on May 15, 1952, in the Bronx borough of New York City, the son of Rose, a homemaker, and Lorenzo Palminteri, a bus driver.[2] He was raised in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx.[3] Palminteri is of Sicilian origin; his grandparents, Calogero Palminteri and Rosa Bonfante, married in 1908, and immigrated to the United States in 1910 from Menfi in the province of Agrigento, Sicily. At the age of nine, Palminteri witnessed a murder of a mobster in front of his apartment building; the police questioned him, but he maintained that he did not see the incident.[4]

He struggled to become an actor, splitting his time between acting in off-Broadway plays and moonlighting as a bouncer, alongside Dolph Lundgren.