Stanley Tucci

Born: January 1960
Where: New York, USA

Almost inevitably cast as a tough guy, Tucci landed his debut feature just three years after being encouraged to take the stage by a school pal's mum.

Prizzi's Honour was followed by the role of Jennifer Beals' French ex-husband in In the Soup and Alec Baldwin's best friend in Prelude to a Kiss.

He went on to play mobster Lucky Luciano in Robert Benton's Billy Bathgate and a Middle Eastern assassin in The Pelican Brief as well as a a corrupt district attorney in Barbet Schroeder's Kiss of Death.

Stanley then took the role of the apparent bad guy in Murder One, a television show that is deemed the precursor to the more recent 24.

Tired of being pigeonholed, Tucci and his cousin Joseph Tropiano fashioned a screenplay about two immigrant brothers running a restaurant on the New Jersey shore in the 1950s.

After several years of working on the script, he and friend Campbell Scott co-directed Big Night, which was one of the high points of that year's Sundance Film Festival.

Tucci went on to appear as Hope Davis' straying husband in Greg Mottola's The Daytrippers, a dentist in Danny Boyle's uneven A Life Less Ordinary and a fictional version of Woody Allen in Deconstructing Harry.

He wrote and directed period cruise ship comedy The Imposters and was miscast as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Tucci bounced back as producer, director and star in Joe Gould's Secret and then played a studio executive in America's Sweethearts and a cheating husband in Sidewalks in New York.

He went on demonstrate his versatility by playing the menacing Chicago mob boss Frank Nitti in director Sam Mendes' The Road to Perdition and Ralph Fiennes nervous campaign manager in the romantic comedy Maid in Manhattan.

The Core saw him donning a wig to play vain scientist Dr Conrad Zimsky in Jon Amiel's enjoyable blockbuster.

More recently, Stanley appeared in the Richard Gere/ Jennifer Lopez flick Shall We Dance?.