"Italian Americans and anyone who had a dark complexion were always playing the bad guy"
Stanley Tucci has had a career filled with diverse roles from serial killer to fashionista to his latest as secret agent Bernard Oderick in Amazon Prime's new series 'Citadel'.
It was during an interview about this show with entertainment.ie's Brian Lloyd that Tucci talked about how he was typecast as a bad guy when he first started acting, simply because he was Italian American.
"You have to remember that Italian Americans and anyone who had a dark complexion were always playing the bad guy", he said. "That's not so much the case anymore, which is great, but if you were of Italian extraction you were cast as the bad guy.
Tucci's roles in his early days of acting include mobster Frank Mossa in 'Miami Vice', Eddie Biasi in 'It Could Happen To You', Frank Zioli in 'Kiss of Death', and gangster Sal in 'The Public Eye'.
"In fact, if you looked at the lead characters, they were all white men or white women and any lead character never had an Italian surname, " he added. "There was this huge prejudice against Italian Americans as there has been against so many ethnic groups in Hollywood."
Tucci continued, "Things are finally starting to change because people are speaking up. Now you see somebody is a teacher, and they have an Italian last name which is scripted and they have nothing to do with the mafia. You are finally starting to see that in probably the last 10 years."
The Oscar-nominated actor eventually started to refuse stereotyped roles for Italians in Hollywood: "I went through a period where I refused to play anybody connected to the mafia. I didn't do it for like ten years."
But in 2002, he made an exception: "When Sam Mendez did 'Road to Perdition, he offered me the role of Frank Nitti. Because of the way it was written, and because there was nobody in that movie who was the good guy - everybody was questionable. It was easy to say yes. It was a sophisticated script and a sophisticated film with lots of layers to it.
"But it's hard, you go without a job, you go without making money."
The six-episode first season of 'Citadel' is scheduled to premiere on April 28, 2023.