The role that kept Joe Pesci in Hollywood exile: “He’s wasting everybody else’s time”
Joe Pesci has garnered a reputation as one of the most recognisable mobsters in the business, forging a career through his grizzly look in some of the most renowned gangster movies of all time. Whether it be his supporting roles in the work of Martin Scorsese, starring in Goodfellas, The Irishman and Raging Bull or his contagious comedic performances in My Cousin Vinny and Home Alone, the actor is inseparable from both genres and considered as a Hollywood legend.
Over the years, he has become entangled with his on-screen characters, with audiences recognising him for cult classic characters, playing sidekicks, villains and loveable rogues. But despite his undeniable star power and sway in the industry, the actor has also been hoodwinked as many times as his on-screen counterparts, with one role that duped him out of millions of dollars and left him with a nasty court case.
Regardless of your level of fame, Hollywood is still a sticky business and one that can play you for a fool if you’re not careful. Countless actors have been roped into dodgy deals and contracts, whether it be a trilogy of shoddy Netflix original films or a television series that they hate by the final season, and even if you’re a global superstar, sometimes there is no way of working around the law if you’ve signed on the dotted line.
While there have been some actors who have managed to find their way out of their contracts, from Ryan Gosling eating pints of ice cream and gaining so much weight that he was fired from a role to Bruce Willis requesting to be released from his Die Hard contract, sometimes actors find themselves being scammed for other reasons, with Joe Pesci famously signing on to star in the mobster movie Gotti: In The Shadow of My Father alongside John Travolta before the producers significantly cut his agreed salary and the size of his role. The team also changed the director attached to the project, with John Cassavetes originally set to direct before it was taken over by Barry Levinson.
Pesci claimed that the producers used his name to generate buzz around the project before reducing is salary and asking him to play a much smaller part. The actor was outraged and filed a lawsuit to sue the producers of the film for failing to honour their original agreement and using his name to generate publicity.
However, this only seemed to cause more trouble for Pesci, with the producer Marc Fiore claiming that Pesci left the project when Cassavetes did, saying, “He’s wasting his time and everybody else’s time. I might be a newbie in town. This newbie is not going to get bullied around.” The lawsuit was eventually settled, and the film was eventually released in 2018 with Travolta in the lead role, with no sign of Pesci in the role he fought for.
The actor then had a long dry spell in his career, with very few roles sprinkled into his filmography until his reunion with Scorsese in 2019 for The Irishman. Pesci has become a sporadic star in Hollywood, and perhaps the upset around the proposed mobster film left quite a sour taste in his mouth.
