Stanley Tucci

Stanley Tucci (born November 11, 1960, Peekskill, New York, U.S.) is a prolific American actor, filmmaker, and writer widely recognized for his versatile acting skills in film, television, and theater, as well as his acclaimed work behind the camera. His decades-long career has often been intertwined with the culinary world, and he experienced a surge of popularity in the 2020s for hosting the travel series Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy.

Early life and career

Tucci is the eldest of three children, with two younger sisters, Christine and Gina. They were raised in Katonah, New York, a hamlet about 45 miles (72.4 km) north of New York City, by parents Stanley Tucci, Sr., an art teacher, and Joan (née Tropiano) Tucci, a secretary and writer. Both of his parents have roots in the Calabria region of southern Italy, and his family briefly lived in Florence during the early 1970s. Stanley Tucci, Jr., attended John Jay High School in Cross River, New York, where he developed his interest in acting with classmate and friend Campbell Scott, who also went on to become an actor, producer, and director.

After graduating from the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at the State University of New York (SUNY) in Purchase in 1982, Tucci had his first professional acting role. He and Scott had walk-on parts as soldiers in the Broadway play The Queen and the Rebels after actress Colleen Dewhurst (Scott’s mother), who was starring in the play, arranged for them to appear. Over the next several years, Tucci continued to gain supporting roles on Broadway, including in such plays as The Misanthrope (1983) and Execution of Justice (1986). He also worked as a model and appeared in a television commercial for Levi’s 501 jeans.

Tucci made his film debut in 1985 portraying a soldier in John Huston’s Prizzi’s Honor starring Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner. He followed up with roles in such movies as Who’s That Girl (1987), Monkey Shines (1988), and Slaves of New York (1989). His first television appearance was in a 1987 episode of the NBC drama Crime Story. He then had recurring roles in Miami Vice between 1986 and 1988, Wiseguy between 1988 and 1989, and Thirtysomething between 1989 and 1990.

Roles from the early 1990s and marriage

By the turn of the 1990s Tucci landed leading roles in Yale Repertory Theatre’s productions of Moon over Miami (1989) and Scapin (1991). He also continued to act in such movies as Men of Respect (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), The Pelican Brief (1993), It Could Happen to You (1994), and Kiss of Death (1995), as well as TV shows including Equal Justice in 1991 and Murder One between 1995 and 1996. In 1995 Tucci married Kate Spath, with whom he went on to have three children, twins Isabel and Nicolo (born 2000) and daughter Camilla (born 2002).

Big Night and other work from the late 1990s

Tucci began his behind-the-camera work with the film Big Night (1996), which he cowrote with his cousin Joseph Tropiano, codirected with Scott, and costarred with actor Tony Shalhoub. The critically acclaimed film about two immigrant brothers, a chef and a businessman who try to save their failing Italian restaurant, was inspired by Tucci’s experience working at a restaurant while attending SUNY Purchase. Tucci won several awards, including the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, the New York Film Critics Circle’s 1996 best new director award, and the 1997 Independent Spirit Award for best first screenplay. The movie prompted Tucci’s mother to coauthor a cookbook with chef Gianni Scappin and writer Mimi Shanley Taft, which was titled Cucina & Famiglia: Two Italian Families Share Their Stories, Recipes and Traditions (1999). It featured a foreword by Stanley Tucci.

After the success of Big Night, Tucci wrote, directed, and starred in The Impostors (1998). He also had appearances in such movies as Deconstructing Harry (1997), A Life Less Ordinary (1997), and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999). Tucci won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his starring role as the influential American journalist and broadcaster Walter Winchell in the TV movie Winchell (1998).

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Work from the 2000s and personal life

Tucci began the 21st century by starring in and directing the film Joe Gould’s Secret (2000), based on The New Yorker’s feature writer Joseph Mitchell’s 1965 book of the same name. The film illustrates the peculiar figures living in early 20th-century Greenwich Village, New York, by focusing on a man who is writing an oral history of the world. The next year Tucci played Nazi senior bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann in Conspiracy, a TV movie that takes place during the 1942 Wannsee Conference, in which Nazi officials met to plan the “final solution” (Endlösung) to the so-called “Jewish question” (Judenfrage). Tucci’s performance garnered him a Golden Globe Award for supporting actor. In 2002 he played Johnny in the Broadway production of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. That same year he became a partner of Finch Tavern, a restaurant in Croton Falls in upstate New York (the restaurant was taken over by an Italian restaurant, Primavera, in 2006). His movies included Sidewalks of New York (2001), America’s Sweethearts (2001), Road to Perdition (2002), Maid in Manhattan (2002), and The Terminal (2004).

In 2007 Tucci starred in and directed the film Blind Date about a married couple that role-plays a first encounter. Tucci also had scene-stealing performances as Nigel Kipling, a theatrical but clear-eyed art director at a fashion magazine in The Devil Wears Prada (2006); Paul Child, the husband of television cook Julia Child, in Julie & Julia (2009); and George Harvey, the murderer and rapist of the lead character in The Lovely Bones (2009). For the latter, he earned his first Academy Award nomination. Tucci was also nominated for a Golden Globe, a BAFTA Award, and a  Screen Actors Guild Award. Meanwhile, his guest appearance in a 2006 episode of Shalhoub’s TV series Monk garnered him an Emmy. In between Tucci’s successes, however, his wife battled breast cancer and died in 2009.

Work from the 2010s and second marriage

In 2010, while attending the wedding of The Devil Wears Prada costar Emily Blunt to actor John Krasinski, Tucci reacquainted himself with Blunt’s sister, Felicity Blunt, whom he had met previously at the film’s premiere. The pair soon began dating and were married in 2012. Tucci became the father of two additional children, Matteo (born 2015) and Emilia (born 2018). During this period, he also authored The Tucci Cookbook: Family, Friends, and Food (2012). Other professional accomplishments included his Broadway directorial debut in 2010 with a revival of Lend Me a Tenor, which received a Tony Award nomination for best revival of a play. He also appeared in such movies as Easy A (2010), Margin Call (2011), The Hunger Games series (2012–15), and the Academy Award-winning Spotlight (2015).

Tucci ended the decade by writing and directing the film Final Portrait (2017), an adaptation of author James Lord’s book about artist Alberto Giacometti’s process to paint Lord’s portrait. He also published the cookbook The Tucci Table (2014) with wife Felicity Blunt and had recurring roles in the anthology TV series Feud (2018) and in the animated series Bojack Horseman (2014–20), as well as parts in The Children Act (2017) and A Private War (2018).

Later career

In 2020 Tucci gained wide attention from his Instagram videos showing him mixing cocktails for his wife during the pandemic. One commentator exclaimed, “The person I want to be in lockdown with is Stanley Tucci.” The following year his popularity continued to soar with the premiere of his series Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, in which he travels across the country sampling a variety of regional cuisines. Filmed primarily before the COVID-19 pandemic, the series offered viewers, who had spent almost a year isolating in their homes, dazzling scenes of Italy and, as The New Yorker’s Helen Rosner described, “cheek-kiss greetings and crowded piazzas, tiny café tables and narrow alleyways. Tucci, the show’s host, wanders through Italy’s regions unmasked, unfettered, chatting amiably with cheesemakers and pizzaiolos, sipping aperitivos on rooftops, picking up petals of artichoke from a plate in a cramped restaurant kitchen.” The series was quickly renewed for another season, and Tucci, who also executive-produced the show, won three Emmys for outstanding hosted nonfiction series or special. Later in 2021 Tucci released the memoir Taste: My Life Through Food, in which readers learned that the first season of Searching for Italy was filmed as Tucci recovered from treatment of oral cancer, which was diagnosed in 2018.

Tucci may have found massive success as a travel host and Instagrammer, but he continued acting in the early 2020s, with a starring role in Supernova (2020) opposite Colin Firth as long-term partners coping with Tucci’s character’s diagnosis of early-onset dementia. Tucci also published another memoir, What I Ate in One Year (and Related Thoughts) (2024).