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My husband is actually Italian-American, and he thought I was Italian when he first met me.
As an Italian-American, I have a special responsibility to be sensitive to ethnic stereotypes.
My working-class Italian-American parents didn't go to school, there were no books in the house.
In New York, if you go into an Italian-American neighbourhood, the code of the streets is respect and reputation.
The passion of the Italian or the Italian-American population is endless for food and lore and everything about it.
I was raised in an Italian-American family in the suburbs of Westchester County, just a little north of New York City.
I like to cook Puerto Rican food. That's what I grew up on: rice, beans, meat, some Italian-American food. I know my way around the kitchen.
If you're an actor from New York, and you're Italian-American, you grow up hoping Marty Scorsese knows your name at some point before you die.
I've played some gangster roles, but that's obviously not me. When you're an Italian-American New York actor, it's just an easy way to get cast.
Mulberry Street was the beating heart of the Italian-American experience, but you don't find those gangsters now. I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.
We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn't speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food.
I don't consider myself part of the Kennedy family. It's almost like a little point of honor. I'm a DiFalco at the end of the day. An Italian-American from upstate New York.
We are offering to the American public a line of delicious Italian-American foods. They will be available through the Internet, shopping networks and national store distribution.
Explain to me what Italian-American culture is. We've been here 100 years. Isn't Italian-American culture American culture? That's because we're so diverse, in terms of intermarriage.
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 don't say, 'Francis Ford Coppola, what a wonderful Italian-American director.' I judge him based on his film, his craft, his art. That's the way I feel I should be dealt with in this industry.
I started cooking 30-something years ago. When I was 14, 15, I was a short-order cook in a snack bar. That was at a place called the Gran Centurions. It was an Italian-American swim club my parents belonged to.
I'm very proud of being Italian-American, but people don't realize that the mafia is just this aberration. The real community is built on the working man, the guy who's the cop, the fireman, the truck driver, the bus driver.
I grew up within Italian-American neighborhoods, everybody was coming into the house all the time, kids running around, that sort of stuff, so when I finally got into my own area, so to speak, to make films, I still carried on.
My family was all born in Sicily and I'm Italian-American. They're the real thing. They're authentic Italians, and honestly they're the most open-minded, nicest people in the world and nothing can really offend them. That's the way I think true Sicilians are.
Playing a positive role on a network television show, it was great. I took it as a responsibility. Poncherello was supposed to be Poncherelli, and then when I got this part I said, 'You know what, this guy isn't going to be Italian-American, he's gonna be Hispanic American.' And they went with it.
Whether you look at 'Glee' and its normalization of gay identity or you look at the work of Martin Scorsese and the Italian-American community, American culture is able to take these stories, which are seen as marginalized, and just turn them into American stories. And you don't think twice about it.
I know that I come from mid-20th century America, urban, specifically downtown New York, specifically an Italian-American area, Roman Catholic - that's who I am. And a part of what I know is there's a decency to people who tried to make a living in the kind of world that was around us and also the Skid Row area of the Bowery; it impressed me.