Calogero Lorenzo "Chazz" Palminteri is an American actor, voice actor, director, producer, screenwriter, and playwright, known for his distinctive deep, raspy Jersey-esque voice. He is best known for his roles as Sonny LoSpecchio in the 1993 crime drama film A Bronx Tale and Dave Kujan in the 1995 mystery film The Usual Suspects. He also voiced Smokey, the lead mob boss alley cat and main antagonist of the 1999 film adaptation of Stuart Little.
For Disney, he portrayed Connie in the 1991 Touchstone Pictures film Oscar. He also voiced Buster, the main antagonist of the 2001 direct-to-video film Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure.
Palminteri was born in the Bronx borough of New York City, the son of Rose, a homemaker, and Lorenzo Palminteri, a bus driver. He was raised in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx. Palminteri is of Sicilian origin; his grandparents, Calogero Palminteri and Rosa Bonfante, married in 1908, and immigrated to the United States in 1910 from Menfi in the province of Agrigento, Sicily. At the age of nine, Palminteri allegedly witnessed the murder of a mobster in front of his apartment building; the police questioned him, but he maintained that he did not see the incident.
He struggled to become an actor, splitting his time between acting in off-Broadway plays and moonlighting as a bouncer, alongside Dolph Lundgren. In 1988, Palminteri was working at a New York nightclub where a party was being thrown for Hollywood talent agent and dealmaker Irving Paul "Swifty" Lazar. When Lazar tried to enter, Palminteri stopped him as he did not know who he was. Lazar got him fired which led to the broke (and unemployed) Palminteri writing A Bronx Tale for himself to star in since he was not being offered any work.
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