My family was blue collar, a middle-class kind of thing. My father was born in Detroit, Italian-American. My mother is English. She acted on the stage with Diana Dors. Her parents were French.
I come from an Italian family. One of the greatest and most profound expressions we would ever use in conversations or arguments was a slamming door. The slamming door was our punctuation mark.
The beauty of Rome is that you can wander into a pizzeria just about anywhere and get a real Italian pizza that's thankfully worlds away from the Super Supreme I used to order at Pizza Hut as a kid.
There wasn't much around. After the shows, we would go to an Italian restaurant that a friend of ours owned and so I didn't get a chance to see much. Actually, that holds true of most places I've been.
I've always felt like a foreigner wherever I've lived. I don't feel much towards my Italian or Scottish roots, although I do cook the pasta at home.
Then I realized my early work did have something special that audiences adored apart from what I humbly thought about them. They occupy a distinguished niche in Italian film history and probably always will.
There are many actors who have inspired me: Spencer Tracy for his incredible elegance and, of course, Cary Grant. But, there's also an Italian actor I admire a great deal: Alberto Sordi.
To see how many Italians are going out of Italy, the sort of exodus, a great generation leaving my country, I think is the worst nightmare for me as prime minister but also for the country, of course.
All of a sudden, there are great Japanese films, or great Italian films, or great Australian films. It's usually because there are a number of people that cross-pollinated each other.
There are many great wine producers from all over the world making fantastic wines. Italian wines especially are making an enormous comeback after sometimes being labeled as inexpensive jug wines.
I see the face of a child. He lives in a great city. He is black. Or he is white. He is Mexican, Italian, Polish. None of that matters. What matters, he's an American child.
Growing up, I was always in the kitchen. Even in third grade, I made cooking videos called 'The Little Italian.' Very little production value, but it was good.
I began thinking there should be an American phrase book, 'cause I've got an Italian phrase book, and an Arabic one... now a British one. I think it'd be pretty good to have an American phrase book.
I grew up speaking Spanish and English. My mother can speak Spanish, English, French and Italian, and she's pretty good at faking Portuguese. I wish that I spoke more languages than I do.
Businessmen should not put their finger in politics, because they tend to think only of their own self-interest. But I worry about the low morale in Italian industry and the lack of government initiatives to help the poor.
The Italians have their priorities right: They're driven, they do their work, but they really enjoy the day-to-day and they don't put off the enjoyment of the everyday for some future goal.
It's funny, because I've never thought of myself as a Hispanic actor, like in 'American Gangster,' I'm playing an Italian. I've always been fortunate enough to have been allowed to play all these diverse roles.
People have an image of Italians. When I go somewhere in the world, I don't care where it is, when they look at me it's not about my intelligence. It's who can I beat up.
Inside me I'm Ghanaian, and I'm proud to be African. But of course I'm Italian. I was born in Italy. I've never been to Africa in my life, but I will go one day.
My mother is French-Italian with a little Spanish blood in her. I've been raised, and she was, as far as I know, raised as a Christian.
Well, the Communists at that moment were very strong in Italy and the Italian Communist Party was the biggest Communist Party outside Soviet Union, there's no doubt about that.
