Thursday 25 July 2013
About the Dennis Farina
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Dennis Farina
February 29, 1944 – July 22,
2013) was an American performer of film and television and former Chicago police
officer. He was a character actor, often typecast as amobster or police officer. His a good number known film
roles are those of mobster Jimmy Serrano in the comedy Midnight Run and Ray "Bones" Barboni in Get Shorty. He starred on television
as Detective Joe
Fontana on Law & Order. He also
hosted and narrated a rejuvenated adaptation ofUnsolved
Mysteries. His last most important TV role was in HBO's Luck, which premiered on January 29,
2012.
Contents
Early life[edit]
Farina
was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Sicilian-American parents Yolanda (née Donati), a homemaker,
and Joseph Farina, a doctor.[2][3][4] His father was from Villalba, Sicily.[5] He was raised in a large family and had three
brothers and three sisters.
Before
becoming an actor, Farina served three years in the US Army and then 18 years
in the Chicago Police
Department's robbery partition, from 1967 to 1985.
Career in show business[edit]
Farina
began his work in the show business working for director Michael Mann as a police consultant, which subsequently
led to an interest in acting when Mann cast him in a tiny role in the 1981 film Thief. Farina proceeded to moonlight as an actor in the Chicago theater
scene before
Mann chose him for hisCrime Story series. Farina play the mobster Albert
Lombard in Michael Mann's other television show, Miami Vice.
Two of
his best known movie characters are Jimmy Serrano, the mob boss from Midnight Run, and Ray
"Bones" Barboni, a rival unlawful of Chili Palmer's in Get Shorty. He also played FBI Agent Jack Crawford in the first Hannibal Lecter crime film, Michael Mann'sManhunter.
Other
movies in Farina's filmography include Steven Spielberg's Saving Private
Ryan (as Army
Lieutenant Colonel Walter Anderson),Striking Distance, Another Stakeout, Little Big League, Snatch, The Mod Squad, Big Trouble and Out of Sight. He co-starred withBette Midler in the romantic comedy That Old Feeling.
Farina
demonstrated a flair for comedy. He won an American Comedy
Award for his
performance in Get
Shorty and
starred in a television sitcom, In-Laws, from 2002 until 2003. He had a wit role
opposite Ed Harris and Helen Hunt in the HBO invention ofEmpire Falls in 2005 and opposite Alan Rickman in 2008's Bottle Shock.
In early
2005, Farina provided the voice of aging boxer-turned-superhero Wildcat on Justice League
Unlimited.
The
producers of the long-running television series Law & Order hired Farina as Det. Joe Fontana after the retirement of Jerry Orbach's character Lennie Briscoe. Farina stayed with the show
for two years, but his character was not as popular with viewers as Orbach's
Lennie Briscoe had been. As a result, in May 2006, it was announced that Farina
was leaving Law &
Order to pursue
other projects, including 2007's You Kill Me opposite Ben Kingsley and 2008's What Happens in
Vegas with Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher.
His role
of Detective Lt. Mike Torello on Crime Story was as a Chicago police officer, who was
later seconded to the U.S. Justice
Department. Farina's Law &
Order character, Joe Fontana,
worked for Chicago Homicide before his transfer to the NYPD. As is common on Law & Order, Fontana
common a number of other characteristics with the actor who played him: they
hailed from the same Chicago neighborhood, attend the same parochial school,
and had the same tastes in both clothes and music.
In
October 2008, Farina became the new host of Unsolved
Mysteries when it
returned to television with a new five-season, 175-episode run on Spike
TV. Farina replaced Robert Stack, who had hosted the series for
its entire original 15-year run before his death in 2003. This version featured
re-edited segments from previous incarnation on NBC, CBS, and Lifetime (all
originally hosted by Stack).[6]
Farina
played the title role in a 2011 independent film, The Last Rites of Joe May, written
and directed by Joe Maggio, shot on location in Chicago.
He
co-starred in the 2012 HBO horse-race gambling series Luck, with Dustin Hoffman, directed by Michael Mann.
He also had a recurring guest role in 2013 in the television comedy series New Girl (though his character was killed off prior to his death).
Personal
life[edit]
Farina in
May 2007
Farina
was married to Patricia Farina from 1970 until their divorce in 1980. They have
three sons together: Dennis Jr, Michael and Joseph. His youngest son, Joseph, is
also an actor. He has two granddaughters, Brianna and Olivia, and four
grandsons: Michael, Tyler, Matthew and Eric. He lived with his longtime
girlfriend Marianne Cahill[7] in Arizona.
Farina
was a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan and played in this role in a 1988 revival
of the successful 1977 Organic Theater Company stage play The Bleacher Bums, which
was written by and starred fellow Chicago actors Joe Mantegna and Dennis Franz.
Arrest[edit]
Farina
was arrested on May 11, 2008, for moving a loaded .22 caliber pistol through Los Angeles
International Airport security.
Farina was taken to LAPD's Pacific Division and booked on suspicion of carrying
a concealed weapon, and bail was set at $25,000. He claimed he had simply
forgotten the weapon was still in his briefcase and had never intended to take
it on a plane. After police determined the weapon was unregistered, the charges
were upgrade to a felony and bail was increased to $35,000.[8]
On July
17, 2008, after accomplishment a plea harmony with prosecutors, Farina pleaded
no match and was sentence to two years' probation.[9]
Death[edit]
Farina
died on July 22, 2013, in a rest home in Scottsdale,
Arizona after misery
a pulmonary
embolism.[10][11]
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