Michael Imperioli Quotes

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Michael Imperioli

Profession : Actor

Birth : March 26, 1966

Being on a TV show is a really good gig for an actor.

Michael Imperioli

It doesn't really matter to me how people see me.

Michael Imperioli

My goal as an actor was just to be somebody very human. I'm not really interested in playing a character who is particularly cool and everything he does looks great and turns out great.

Michael Imperioli

I think a lot of people who didn't know my work before 'The Sopranos' think I came from the Jersey Shore, like they picked us out of the mall and put us on television.

Michael Imperioli

I think people always thought I was more of a Guido than I am.

Michael Imperioli

When I read the pilot of 'The Sopranos,' I wasn't terribly blown away by it.

Michael Imperioli

At one point, I got to work as an assistant for Martin Scorsese: He wanted to know about all the films coming out, so I would make clippings and put it all in a big scrapbook for him. I was also in charge of his video library - it was like a little video store, and his friends and colleagues would come and borrow films.

Michael Imperioli

One of my early money mistakes was getting fired from the first acting job I ever had. I was cast in a play as the lead, and I got fired three nights after the open.

Michael Imperioli

I didn't start making a real living until eight or nine years in. Even after 'Goodfellas' came out, I was still working as a waiter, and people would recognize me - that was an odd experience. But when 'The Sopranos' hit, that was like an exponential leap.

Michael Imperioli

In this world, there really is a law of cause and effect: You reap what you sow. Then energy you put out really does come back to you.

Michael Imperioli

I love fiction and read novels constantly.

Michael Imperioli

With screenplays and teleplays, they are mapped, really, in the blueprint of a finished product, which is something you're going to watch on a screen. But a book is an end to itself, really.

Michael Imperioli

I have a background writing screenplays and teleplays. I've tried to write prose and fiction but never really completed anything I thought worthy of publication or worthy of anyone else to even look at.

Michael Imperioli

There's a whole network of people, particularly in New York, obviously, that came up through the Spike Lee School. I'm one of them. That's big!

Michael Imperioli

Spike Lee is not the first name you would probably think about redoing 'Oldboy.'

Michael Imperioli

I don't know if I would have had the same career had I not done 'GoodFellas.' Probably not. Would I have been cast on 'The Sopranos?' Who knows if there would have been a 'Sopranos?'

Michael Imperioli

I like working with people I know and feel a kinship to.

Michael Imperioli

There's an intelligence that goes with being a good cop. Intuitiveness - they have to be actors; they have to have deductive reasoning, knowledge about a great deal of subjects.

Michael Imperioli

Everybody I play probably has some Italian in them.

Michael Imperioli

I enjoy playing characters who are struggling, particularly with themselves.

Michael Imperioli