Edoardo Ballerini

Edoardo Ballerini (born March 20, 1970) is an Italian-American actor, audiobook narrator, writer, director and film producer. He is known for his work on screen as junkie Corky Caporale in The Sopranos (2006–2007), Ignatius D'Alessio in Boardwalk Empire, a hotheaded chef in the indie hit Dinner Rush (2001), and an NFL businessman in the blockbuster Romeo Must Die (2000). He has appeared in numerous films and television series, from I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) to the Omphalos (2013).

Edoardo Ballerini
Ballerini in 2007
Born (1970-03-20) March 20, 1970
Los Angeles, California
OccupationActor, writer, director and film producer
Years active1995 - Present
WebsiteEdoardo Ballerini

His directorial debut, Good Night Valentino, premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival.[1] Ballerini starred in the film as silent film idol Rudolph Valentino. Eva Guggenheim was one of the producers for the short film.

He is prolific and award-winning audiobook narrator including Beautiful Ruins, War and Peace, and the 6-volume My Struggle.

Early life and education

Ballerini was born to an Italian father, the poet Luigi Ballerini, and an American mother, the writer Julia Ballerini. He grew up between New York City and Milan, Italy. He is a dual citizen, and bilingual. His early schooling took place in New York, at P.S. 41 and later Friends Seminary, before he left home at age 14 for boarding school. From there, he attended Wesleyan University. The summer following his graduation, Ballerini was given a scholarship to study Latin in Rome. In Italy, he discovered a group of ex-pat actors who were forming a theater company. He joined the troupe. The following fall he attended regular acting classes in New York at The Lee Strasberg Theater Institute. He later became an observer at The Actor's Studio.[2]

Career

Ballerini's first professional role was as an autistic teenager on Law & Order (1995). Two years later, he starred in the John Leguizamo comedy The Pest (1997) and, after that, appeared in Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco (1998) and Amos Kollek's Sue (1998).

Ballerini was cast as the "star chef" in Bob Giraldi's Dinner Rush (2001) opposite Danny Aiello. The film grossed only $638,227[3] but received largely positive reviews.[4] Internationally, the film did much better and broke into the top ten in box office receipts in Japan in 2003.

The same year, Ballerini wrote, directed and starred in a short film about 1920s film icon Rudolph Valentino. The film premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and was entered into the permanent archive at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. The film was also presented at the National Museum of Cinema in Turin, Italy in 2009 as part of a Valentino retrospective.[5] Emily Leider, in her biography of Valentino titled Dark Lover (2003), wrote that Ballerini "infuses his [Valentino] with exactly the right mix of pride, elegance, grace and anguish... on screen, Ballerini's resemblance to Valentino is uncanny."[6]

Ballerini was also cast as another famous 1920s Italian, the anarchist and labor leader Carlo Tresca, in No God, No Master (2011).

Theater

Ballerini made his first professional appearance on stage as a child in 1980 at Theater for the New City, New York, in Mario Prosperi's "Uncle Mario." He subsequently joined the Italian Commedia dell'arte troupe[7] for several performances. Stage credits as an adult include Stefanie Zadravec's "Honey Brown Eyes" (Theater Row), John Jesurun's "Chang in a Void Moon" (The Kitchen), "The End of Cinematics" (St. Ann's Space), "Crossroads" (The Henry Street Settlement), and several pieces in "The Eugene O'Neill Project" (The Actors Studio, The Eugene O'Neill Center).

Audiobooks

Ballerini is a frequent and award-winning audiobook narrator. In 2007 he recorded his first book, Machiavelli's The Prince, as a favor for a friend who was starting a new studio.[8] Ballerini considers Beautiful Ruins (2012) to be a career changing moment; prior to this he had only recorded a few books, and its success catapulted his audiobook career.[8] Beautiful Ruins won the Audio Publishers Association award for best audiobook of the year on the solo male narrator category.[8]

He received Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine for his recordings of Stephen Greenblatt's National Book Award-winning The Swerve, Paul Farmer's Haiti: After the Earthquake (with Meryl Streep and Eric Conger), and Kristopher Jansma's The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards.[9] In a feature profile, The New York Times Magazine called him "The Voice of God", in part because of his narration of the Hebrew Bible.[8] Other major titles include War and Peace, The Metamorphosis, and Karl Ove Knausgaards six-volume autobiographical opus, My Struggle which he considers his most ambitious, it took him 200 hours over the course of five years to finish.[8]

Ballerini has been a regular reader of New Yorker long form articles by way of the Audm app.

Personal life

Ballerini moved to Los Angeles in 2000 before eventually returning to the New York area, where he continues his career.[8] Ballerini has a small sound studio in his house where he records books; the house was once owned by a silent movie star.[8]

Filmography

References
  1. "The Sundance 2003 Lineup". About.com. 2003. Archived from the original on 2005-09-19. Retrieved May 16, 2020.
  2. Iain Alexander (January 11, 2010). "In conversation with actor Edoardo Ballerini". Film Industry Network.
  3. "Dinner Rush". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved May 16, 2020.
  4. "Dinner Rush". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved May 16, 2020.
  5. "Rodolfo Valentino: La Seduzione Del mito" (PDF). unito.it. February 2009. Retrieved May 14, 2020.
  6. Emily Wortis Leider (2003). Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 420-421. ISBN 0374282390.
  7. Alessandra Belloni (2002). "I Giullari di Piazza". alessandrabelloni.com. Archived from the original on 2010-11-10.
  8. Susan Dominus (May 13, 2020). "The Voice of God. (And Knausgaard, Whitman, Machiavelli … )". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved May 13, 2020.
  9. "RFeview: The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards". AudioFile. 2013. Retrieved May 16, 2020.
  10. Steve Eramo (February 23, 2013). "Edoardo Ballerini Talks Ripper Street". themortonreport.com. Retrieved May 16, 2020.
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