Born in the Bronx, N.Y., on June 20, 1933, Danny Aiello went on to make a career of playing gangsters and heavies from his home borough. With a varied background as a nightclub bouncer, announcer at the Improv Comedy Club and youngest-ever president of the Greyhound workers union, Aiello eventually landed onstage, winning critics' awards in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.A seasoned veteran of the theater, he made his film debut at age 39 in 1973's Bang the Drum Slowly, after which he appeared in The Godfather: Part II, The Purple Rose of Cairo and Moonstruck. His career-defining performance as Sal the pizzeria owner in 1989's Do the Right Thing brought him an Oscar nod.
Aiello has appeared in, among other films, Ruby (1992, in the title role), Harlem Nights, Once Around, 2 Days in the Valley, the 1997 miniseries The Last Don and 2006's Lucky Number Slevin.
Do the Right ThingWhat begins as an uproarious comedy evolves into a provocative, disquieting drama as director Spike Lee chronicles trivial events that bring festering racial tensions to the surface on a sweltering day in a largely black Brooklyn neighborhood. After a number of minor misunderstandings -- and an... Read More
Dinner RushLouis (Danny Aiello) is an aging bookie and restaurateur who's bemoaning the transformation of Gigino's -- his restaurant in the TriBeCa area of New York City -- from a down-to-earth, mom-and-pop Italian eatery to a pretentious, see-and-be-seen establishment. To make matters worse, Louis's son Udo... Read More
2 Days in the ValleyThe lives of several strange characters intersect in John Herzfeld's quirky crime comedy. A depressed has-been director (Paul Mazursky), an arrogant art dealer and his long-suffering assistant, a loser hit man (Danny Aiello), a cold assassin (James Spader) and his girlfriend (Charlize Theron), all... Read More
Mojave MoonIn this off-the-wall indie comedy, a middle-aged car salesman gets much more than he bargained for when he offers a shapely young beauty a ride to her desert mobile home -- and finds a corpse in his trunk the next morning. Read More
Power of AttorneyMafia bigwig Joseph Scassi (Danny Aiello) faces a federal indictment of extortion and murder, so he brings all the power he can to bear and hires a brilliant U.S. Attorney, Paul Dell (Elias Koteas), to defend him. But Scassi, of course, doesn't play fair and intimidates the young legal eagle via... Read More
