Incredibly, Pesci never really wanted to be an actor, his first love was music. To be clear, Raging Bull was not his first film, he had appeared in a B movie years before that both De Niro and Martin Scorsese saw and had never forgotten the short, intense actor with the smouldering eyes. They were sensational together, they still are, and yet after such a stunning debut, Pesci would have a sporadic career through the nineties. The intensity of the chemistry between Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci was electrifying, exciting to watch because you just never knew what was going to happen. Joe Pesci exploded into movies as Joey LaMotta in Martin Scorsese’s stunning, bleak biography of fighter Jake LaMotta, Raging Bull (1980).

As a lawyer in My Cousin Vinny (1992) he bumbled his way through a murder case, bailed out by his smoking hot girlfriends knowledge of all things automobile.

No threats, he just went for you, and make no mistake, if he came after you, chances are you were dead.Īnd yet, incredibly that same man who could radiate such pure danger, was a gifted comedian, portraying a cartoonish burglar bested by an eight-year-old boy in Home Alone (1991), taking fearsome physical punishment. He looked his prey in the eye, spoke clearly at them, his entire body coiled like a rattlesnake and then he acted. Despite his small stature, Pesci can dominate a scene with the same ferocity as John Wayne, his explosive, uncontainable fury was simply terrifying.

Though he has not worked often when he does make a film, he makes it count and when working with actor Robert De Niro and director Martin Scorsese, it is legendary.

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