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• 1 2018-05-07T20:24:41-07:00 Stanley Tucci 5 plain 2018-05-07T20:57:12-07:00     Stanley Tucci was born in Peekskill, New York, and was the son of two Italian descendants from Calabria.  During the early 1970s, he and his family spent a year living in Florence Italy.  Tucci's first film was in 1985, called Prizzi's Honor.  Since then he has acted in dozens of different films.  One of his best and most influential on Italian-Americans was the film Big Night.  Not only did he act in it, but he also wrote and directed it.
       Big Night is an off-beat, Italian American family dram revolving around Italian food and restaurants.  Tucci used behavioural things from his childhood to help him create the characters in the film.  The characters and ideas are easily relatable, and many Italian-Americans were able to relate to the film.  Tucci also took this opportunity to portray Italians in a different light then from how they are usually portrayed in films.  
       There are constant screen portrayals of Italian-Americans as gangsters and  mafioso.  Stanley Tucci has quoted "It is not about what we do see about Italians, it is about what we do not see".  Tucci believes it is important to put Italians in different capacities,  to show that they can be anything other then a gangster.  They can be chefs, teachers, doctors, etc.