Michael Imperioli

Imperioli was born in Mount Vernon, New York, on March 26, 1966. His grandparents were Italians from Lazio and Calabria. He is the son of Dan Imperioli, a bus driver and amateur actor,[1] and Claire Imperioli, an amateur actress.

Imperioli in 2005

Imperioli has been nominated for two Golden Globe Awards as well as for five Emmy Awards for his work as Christopher Moltisanti on The Sopranos; he won one Emmy for the show's fifth season in 2004.[2]

In addition to his role on The Sopranos, Imperioli has appeared in a number of films, including Goodfellas, Jungle Fever, Bad Boys, Malcolm X, The Basketball Diaries, Clockers, Dead Presidents, Girl 6, My Baby's Daddy, Lean on Me, I Shot Andy Warhol, Last Man Standing, Shark Tale, High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story, and Summer of Sam, which he also co-wrote and co-produced. He also wrote five episodes for The Sopranos.[3]

He served as artistic director of Studio Dante,[4] an Off-Broadway theater he formed with his wife. He is also the lead singer/guitarist for a rock band named La Dolce Vita.[5] He makes a brief appearance in the video for the 1983 hit 'Shiny Shiny' by British performance group Haysi Fantayzee.[6] Imperioli is an active member of The Jazz Foundation of America and co-hosted their May 2009 annual benefit concert, "A Great Night in Harlem", at the Apollo Theater, which celebrated the foundation's 20th anniversary.[7] He was a guest on episode MB2E08 ("San Giuseppe") of Mario Batali's Food Network television show Molto Mario. In 2010, Imperioli signed on to play the lead in the ABC TV show Detroit 1-8-7.[8] Working with the writer Gabriele Tinti, he wrote the text Pride for Tinti's book New York Shots, and participated in a reading of The Way of the Cross at the Queens Museum of Art in 2011.

He won the "Tournament of Stars" competition on the cooking show Chopped in 2014, sending $50,000 to his designated charity the Pureland Project, an organization which builds and maintains schools in rural Tibet. In 2016, he guest starred as the angel Uriel on the Fox show Lucifer.[9]

On March 13, 2019, Imperioli was cast in the lead role of Rick Sellitto in NBC drama series Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector.[10] Imperioli began hosting a podcast alongside Steve Schirripa called Talking Sopranos, which began on April 6, 2020, where the two provide inside info as they follow The Sopranos series episode by episode.[11][12] In July, 2020, he hosted a show on NTS Radio called 632 ELYSIAN FIELDS, which was inspired by A Streetcar Named Desire.[13] By September 2020, the podcast had reached over five million downloads.[14] On September 17, 2020, Imperioli and Schirripa signed a deal with HarperCollins book imprint William Morrow and Company to write an oral history of the show.[14] In September 2020, Imperioli provided narration for The Whistleblower, a podcast about the 2007 NBA betting scandal.[15]

Imperioli has been married to Victoria Chlebowski since 1995, lives in Santa Barbara, California, and has three children. He and his family are avid practitioners of Tae Kwon Do.[16] In 2008, Imperioli became a Buddhist.[17]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Michael Imperioli.

• Michael Imperioli at IMDb
• Bio and photo of Michael Imperioli — Crain's New York Business 40 under 40 — 2005