Joe Mantegna - biography

“I’m a character actor so I’ve jumped around to all kinds of things.”

“There are a lot of people who will come to me for advice or whatever.”

“I’ve loved it, but I have a wife and two children.”

“There’s good and evil going on.  We have cops.  We have robbers.”

“When they were small and my wife really had no other responsibilities, except taking care of the family and all of us, it wasn’t that big a deal.  It was fun.  Hey, we’re going to Moscow.  We’re going to Italy.  We’re going to Toronto.  We’re going to New York.”

“I did plays and movies and whatever all over the place.”

“When I played Dean Martin, he was dead when we made the movie but there would have been nothing better than to spend a week with Dean Martin if I could have.”

“If you’re going to believe in a God, then you also have to equally believe that there’s a flip side to this.”

“You know the way I play golf, it’s a good I do these things for charities.”

“Dean Martin is one of my heroes.”

“I reached that day that I always thought might happen, where I say to myself I don’t want to do this anymore.  I’m looking for some stability.  I want to stay home.”

“If at the end of the day, people look at it and say, oh, yeah, I liked his stuff, or for the most part I liked his stuff, or I’ve enjoyed watching some of the things he’s done, that’s all I can hope for.”

“I mean, it’s the life lessons that I suppose you learn that nobody gets a free ride and that you do the best you can with the means that you can and try to open yourself to as much knowledge and all that that you can.”

“I’m in the wrong racket if I didn’t want a public life.”

“For every Mother Teresa, there’s a Jeffrey Dahmer.”

“Whenever you’re going to play a real person, you run the risk of well, everybody in the world kind of has an image of what that person is and who he should be and so you really have to do your homework.”

“But we’re still in somewhat a Puritanical society in a lot of ways.”

“But what I will do is I’ll acknowledge it and if it can be of any help the fact that I do acknowledge it then maybe other people will benefit from it because I do have somewhat of a public forum being in the line of work I am.”

“For the last thirty years in my career I never know what I’m doing next.”

“I mean, believe me, I’m not for censorship.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if some day, they put the Simpsons in the Smithsonian.  It’s become part of our culture, those characters.”

“I’ve spent the better part of the last twenty-five years doing a lot of traveling.”

“That’s why I really don’t play cards or gamble.  Because I’d crack.”

“There’s now a Fat Tony doll, which cracks me up.  But you feel honored that they asked you to do a voice.”

“They put me in the drama class, and that’s the path I’ve taken.”

“You learn that not all things fall into a certain kind of pattern that can be predictable and that can be understandable and that’s going to be easy, you know.”

“You talk to the real cops and they say ninety percent of it is paperwork.”

Joe Mantegna has appeared in the following films:
Towing (1978)
Compromising Positions (1985)
Off Beat (1986)
The Money Pit (1986)
¡Three Amigos! (1986)
Weeds (1987)
Critical Condition (1987)
House of Games (1987)
Things Change (1988)
Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1989)
Alice (1990)
The Godfather: Part III (1990)
Bugsy (1991)
Queens Logic (1991)
Homicide (1991)
Body of Evidence (1993)
Family Prayers (1993)
Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)
Airheads (1994)
Baby’s Day Out (1994)
Captain Nuke and the Bomber Boys (1995)
Forget Paris (1995)
Above Suspicion (1995)
For Better or Worse (1995)
Albino Alligator (1996)
Up Close and Personal (1996)
Eye for an Eye (1996)
Persons Unknown (1996)
Thinner (1996)
Underworld (1996)
Body and Soul (1998)
Hoods (1998)
Boy Meets Girl (1998)
For Hire (1998)
Jerry and Tom (1998)
The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1998)
Liberty Heights (1999)
Airspeed (1999)
Error in Judgment (1999)
The Runner (1999)
The Last Producer (2000)
More Dogs Than Bones (2000)
Laguna (2001)
Fall (2001)
Off Key (2001)
The Trumpet of the Swan (2001)
Mother Ghost (2002)
Uncle Nino (2003)
Pontormo (2004)
Pontormo: A Heretical Love (2004)
Stateside (2004)
Edmond (2005)
The Kid & I (2005)
Cougar Club (2007)
Elvis and Anabelle (2007)
Stories USA (2007)
The Simpsons Movie (2007)
Childless (2008)
Hank and Mike (2008)
West of Brooklyn (2008)
Lonely Street (2009)
My Suicide (2009)
The Assistants (2009)
The House That Jack Built (2009)
Cars 2 (2011)


Joe Mantegna directed the following films:
Lakeboat (2000)