BloG
Stories & Articles about Italian Americans who have contributed to the entertainment industry.
Gwen Stefani – Italian American Singer
Gwen Renée Stefani was born on October 3, 1969, in Fullerton, California, and raised Catholic in nearby Anaheim, California. Her father, Dennis Stefani, is Italian-American and worked as a Yamaha marketing executive. Stefani's parents were fans of folk music and...
Jerry Vale – Italian American Singer
Vale was born Gennaro Louis Vitaliano in the Bronx, New York, to Italian immigrant parents, and grew up in the Wakefield section of the Bronx which at the time was composed mainly of Italian-American families. In high school, to earn money, Vale took a job shining...
Sylvester Stallone – Italian American Actor
Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone was born in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City on July 6, 1946, the elder son of Francesco "Frank" Stallone Sr., a hairdresser and beautician, and Jacqueline "Jackie" Stallone (née Labofish; 1921–2020), an...
Alessandro Nivola – Italian American Actor
Nivola was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His mother, Virginia (née Davis), is an artist, and his father, Pietro Salvatore Nivola (1944–2017), was a professor of political science and a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. Nivola's paternal grandfather was the...
Al Molinaro – Italian American Actor
Umberto Francesco Molinaro was born and raised in the Columbus Park neighborhood of Kenosha, Wisconsin, the second-youngest of ten children of Italian immigrants, Raffaele and Teresa Molinaro, from the province of Cosenza in Calabria. Molinaro's father was a prominent...
Rivers Cuomo – Italian American Musician
Rivers Cuomo was born on June 13, 1970, in New York City. His father, Frank Cuomo, was a musician who played drums on the 1971 album Odyssey of Iska by jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Rivers was raised in Rochester, New York, at the Rochester Zen Center, until...
Sergio Franchi – Italian American Singer
Sergio Franci Galli was one of three children born to a Neapolitan father and Ligurian (Genoa) mother. Sergio, Mirella, and Fausta were all born in the Lombardy District. This includes Milan, Cremona, and the smaller village of Codogno - where he was born. As a...
Ronnie James Dio – Italian American Singer
Ronald James "Dio" Padavona was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Italian-American parents from Cortland, New York. Padavona listened to a great deal of opera while growing up, and was influenced vocally by tenor Mario Lanza. His first formal musical training...
Giancarlo Esposito – Italian American Actor
Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito was born in Copenhagen, the son of Giovanni "John" C. Esposito, an Italian stagehand and carpenter from Naples, and Elizabeth "Leesa" Foster, an African-American opera and nightclub singer from Alabama. When Esposito was six, his...
Ida Lupino – Italian American Actress
Ida Lupino was born in Herne Hill, London, to actress Connie O'Shea (also known as Connie Emerald) and music hall comedian Stanley Lupino, a member of the theatrical Lupino family, which included Lupino Lane, a song-and-dance man. Her father, a top name in musical...
Kate Walsh – Italian American Actress
Kate Walsh was born in San Jose, California. Her mother, Angela Bocchetto is of Italian descent, with roots from Potenza, in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata. Walsh graduated from Catalina Magnet High School and studied acting at the University of...
Jason Schwartzman – Italian American Actor
Jason Francesco Schwartzman was born in Los Angeles on June 26, 1980, the son of actress Talia Shire (Coppola) and film producer Jack Schwartzman. His paternal grandparents were Polish Jews, while his mother is an Italian-American Catholic. His younger brother, Robert...