Michael Rispoli

Michael Rispoli is an American actor and Broadway performer born on November 27, 1960, in Tappan, New York, where he grew up as one of eight children in a second-generation Italian American family. He attended Tappan Zee High School, where he played football, before pursuing formal training in theater at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, from which he graduated in 1982.

Rispoli's Broadway career spans nearly three decades, from 1993 to 2022, and includes appearances in The Long Christmas Dinner and Between Riverside and Crazy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play written by Stephen Adly Guirgis.

On television, Rispoli is widely recognized for his work on the HBO series The Sopranos, where he was considered for the role of Tony Soprano before being cast as Jackie Aprile, a recurring character in the show's first season. He later appeared as a series regular on another HBO production, The Deuce. His film work includes The Taking of Pelham 123, a 2009 thriller in which he reunited with Sopranos co-star James Gandolfini. He also co-starred in Union Square, a feature film co-written and directed by Nancy Savoca, a Grand Jury Award winner at the Sundance Film Festival. The film premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and featured a cast that included Mira Sorvino, Patti LuPone, Tammy Blanchard, Mike Doyle, and Daphne Rubin-Vega.