Playboy's 20Q: Stanley Tucci

the actor and filmmaker sings out on the sopranos, seamed stockings and the sexual power of risotto

Stanley Tucci suggests an omelette, Italian-style. The eggs are cooked with olive oil and served with a loaf of bread. It's the "morning after" breakfast he prepared in his movie Big Night. Tucci is also forthcoming about his recipe for artistic success: Earn enough money acting in big-budget movies to finance his own films, where happy endings aren't guaranteed. The protagonist brothers of Big Night face an empty restaurant at the end of the film. Tucci refused a distributor's plea to add a scene showing reservations pouring in. A meat-and-potatoes clientele will not be enticed by Big Night's authentic Italian cuisine. Period.

Tucci paid his dues in the kitchen and on the stage. He worked in restaurants while he studied drama in college. And he worked in restaurants while he built an acting career in New York, where he found parts in plays by Shakespeare, Molière and O'Neill. His first film and TV appearances, however, were heavy on underworld types. Tucci is up front about his distaste for scumbag roles, especially mafiosi, but he turned in some high-profile portrayals of lowlifes: gangster Lucky Luciano in Billy Bathgate and Richard Cross in the television series Murder One.

He plotted an end run around the bad guys, though. The tension between culinary art and commerce is examined in Big Night, which he co-wrote and co-directed. The movie has achieved cult status among those who fancy films starring Italian favorites such as risotto and timpano. (Yes, he has appeared with his mother and father on a television cooking show.) He followed with The Impostors, a farce set aboard a Thirties ocean liner (filmed Thirties-style on an elaborate stage set built in an old New York bakery), and Joe Gould's Secret, a dark story of a writer's relationship with an eccentric denizen of Greenwich Village. Tucci lures such A-list actors as Woody Allen, Susan Sarandon, Steve Martin and Isabella Rossellini for his own projects. And directors of independent films, such as Edward Burns (Sidewalks of New York), know they can sign Tucci for peanuts if the role is good.

What Tucci calls his "bigger movies" include Midsummer Night's Dream (with Michelle Pfeiffer and Calista Flockhart) and Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry. His portrayal of the motormouth gossip columnist in the television bio Winchell garnered him an Emmy and a Golden Globe. And Tucci still investigates the dark side. Last spring he donned an S.S. uniform to portray Adolf Eichmann opposite Kenneth Branagh as Reinhard Heydrich in HBO's Conspiracy, a drama about the 1942 Wannsee Conference, where Nazi officials planned the extermination of the Jews. He's currently appearing in Big Trouble with Tim Allen and Rene Russo.

Contributing Editor Warren Kalbacker met Tucci one morning in lower Manhattan and the two talked over plates of scrambled eggs and cups of strong coffee and tea. "I'd heard that Tucci is a connoisseur of bygone Manhattan, so the cobblestone streets and vintage architecture seemed the perfect setting for a conversation. And I quickly learned the man's taste for retro extends to dress as well. He apologized for not wearing a sports jacket."

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[Q] Playboy: Is Italian culture mankind's last best hope?

[A] Tucci: Yes, but not the obsession with cell phones. Italians have a way of enjoying life more than any other culture—living to eat as opposed to eating to live. Art and design are incredibly important. It's very interesting: The birthrate in Italy is practically zero right now. People aren't interested in having kids anymore. American culture has it a bit backward. We're so puritanical and trying to become more so. We're so rigid and work-obsessed and speed-obsessed. We're adolescents. You can't smoke a cigarette every now and again. All of a sudden everybody is a Shaker and they don't want you to have sex. John Ashcroft not dancing? What the fuck is that? It's so sad to me. Europeans laugh at us, and rightly so. Irony is disappearing from our culture, any sense of ambiguity, any sense of gray. We want it to be black-and-white. Italians don't think that way. My good friend Gianni Scappin, a chef who wrote a cookbook with my parents, says at the end of every sentence, "Well, it depends." And he's right. It does depend. But I'm so disturbed. I'm moving to Paris where you can have a cocktail and see a sculpture of a naked woman.

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[Q] Playboy: You've played Lucky Luciano and other underworld types, yet struggled against becoming a made man in the world of mob actors. Is Stanley Tucci a guy who has mastered the art of refusing a certain kind of offer?

[A] Tucci: You have to work. For a while, that was all that was accessible to me. Intermittently there would be something different—a cop, say—but I had to struggle with it for a long time. Eventually I got to the point where I could start turning them down. In every script I've read for years, there have been these terrible stereotypes. A lot of times the Italian guy is meaner or dumber or badder than the whiter gangster, and that's the only way people see Italian Americans. One of the reasons my cousin and I wrote Big Night is that we wanted to portray Italian Americans in a positive way, to give people other images of them. I'm going to play Frank Nitti for Sam Mendes in his movie The Road to Perdition. It'll be the first time I've done this in almost a decade. Although the Italian guy in the movie is the bad guy, it's all about Irish gangsters and how Italian gangsters fit into that milieu. In this case, it's not some stereotype. The character is a complex person.

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[Q] Playboy: We've noticed the large number of Italian (continued on page 150)Stanley Tucci(continued from page 135) delicatessens and bakeries in North Jersey that display photographs of Sopranos cast members. What is it with small-business owners and wiseguys?

[A] Tucci: It's so unfortunate. The Sopranos is a very good show, but it has set the cause back quite a few years. It's so insulting at this point. How many people auditioned for The Sopranos? Thirty thousand? It's depressing. Italian Americans don't have a great history of getting together, but for some reason they'll get 30,000 people to go audition to play gangsters. I don't understand it. Why is this so important to them? Movies like The Godfather, Goodfellas and Mean Streets are brilliant films. And you go back to earlier films in the Thirties, like Scarface. The impact of those films was huge. All anybody ever wants to do is try to make something like them. We can't get away from the Italian American as this person. It's not like Italians haven't assimilated in society, and it's not as though there are a lot of Italian Americans in the Mafia. The number is minimal. Moreover, the other mafias—like the Russians—are much more powerful.

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[Q] Playboy: You've sported a fedora in several roles and looked quite comfortable. Do you think men would do well to don sophisticated headgear?

[A] Tucci: I do. It keeps your head warm. But fedoras are always too big for me. I like something a little smaller. There was a fellow on the train this morning who was dressed a lot like Joseph Mitchell. He had on a nice overcoat and tweed jacket, shirt and tie and a nice little hat. And he looked fabulous. To me you have to have the right outfit. But you can't wear a hat the way I'm dressed right now. You'd look silly, like Joseph Beuys, the German artist who always wore a fedora and a white shirt and a vest and a pair of jeans. And the problem is there's no hatcheck. So what do you do with your hat?

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[Q] Playboy: You earned rave reviews for your portrayal of Wall Street shark Hunter Lasky on the short-lived TV series Bull. Did your work on the show enable you to predict the collapse in tech stocks?

[A] Tucci: No. I know very little about that world, but I'm glad it looked like I did. I didn't prep for that role, because there was no way I could understand all that. I went in. I read the scripts. And then I pretended I was that fella. Really. I don't even handle my own finances. My wife handles all the money and she's brilliant at it. After we met, she went back to Columbia to get her master's in social work. She took an economics class and the teacher told her she should think about being an economist because she had a talent for it. But she had no interest.

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[Q] Playboy: You were paid less than $100 per day for your work as a husband straying into a gay affair in the film Daytrippers. If word gets out that you're willing to act for that kind of money, won't you be deluged with scripts from aspiring directors?

[A] Tucci: That whole movie was made for $60,000. I was paid $75 a day. I just did an Eddie Burns movie for scale. I think it's $1000 a week. Eddie made that movie for something like $1 million and shot it in 17 days. I went in and worked for six days. One of my movies was made for $4.3 million and the two others for $8 million and $7 million. With that kind of money, you can't afford to pay anybody. If you start to negotiate everybody's fees, you end up with a $20 million movie. I couldn't make my own movies, and no one would ever hire me to do a small movie. I don't want that. You want to be able to do a movie if you see something that's interesting.

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[Q] Playboy: We're sure you have visited Hollywood. How do you find the air out there?

[A] Tucci: I like the air in New York. Last winter was the best winter we've had in years—cold and snowy, as it should be. Hollywood is all about one thing. It's boring to talk about the same thing all the time. Everybody has a script. How is that possible? It's impossible, but they do. It gets a little tedious. I like a city you can walk around in. I don't like to drive a car all the time.

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[Q] Playboy: You're a regular at film festivals. What's the etiquette? Are you on your best behavior? Do you plot strategy?

[A] Tucci: I love film festivals. I've had good experiences with the films I've brought to them. Big Night did well at Sundance and then we brought it to Deauville. Imposters was at Toronto and Cannes. Joe Gould's Secret was at Sundance. I try to enjoy myself as much as possible. But if people aren't liking your film, it's probably best to get on a plane and go home quickly. I'm a huge proponent of Sundance. I went to the lab this year and worked as an advisor. The people who run Sundance really are doing it for the right reasons—to nurture independent filmmakers and give them as many opportunities as possible. I met a guy there with whom I was supposed to work as an advisor. He'd made a beautiful short film of his script, and I said to him, "I want to produce this film." Sundance set up all the meetings to help this guy get his movie made. Now, whether someone will make the film or not, we don't know. But the original intention has not been lost. A festival can make all the difference in the world for a little movie. It also gives you an opportunity as a filmmaker to have the press see your work. Cannes is like a three-ring circus. It's insanity. You've never seen so many people in your life. People go there and set up an office to try to sell their films—all different kinds of films. It's mayhem, but it's fun. You sit on the beach and drink wine and get a limo and go somewhere. It's a gas for a few days.

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[Q] Playboy: Chefs and actors. Don't both professions dangle the possibility of stardom and frequently offer the reality of underappreciation?

[A] Tucci: There is definitely a similarity. In writing Big Night, I wanted to make it about an artist and a chef. I didn't want to make it about an actor. And a painter would have been too rarified. All the arts are the same. A great chef is an artist, and one who is underappreciated. It's just as painful as the painter who dies and isn't recognized. The chef can't be posthumously recognized because all his food has been eaten or has spoiled, and his recipes live on only if he chose to write them down. A restaurant is like a theater. Backstage is the kitchen and the dining room; the front of the house is where you come out and perform.

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[Q] Playboy: A gentleman we know was presented with a risotto cookbook by his wife. What are the implications for that marriage?

[A] Tucci: That guy had better make a whole lot of stock and get a pair of comfortable shoes, because he's going to be standing in front of that stove for a long time. There's something very sweet about that gift. It's quite romantic. Food is very sexual. Risotto is a delicate dish. It has to be cooked slowly and has tremendous variety. It's endless what you can do with it. Sunday I made risotto with mushrooms and zucchini. My wife and I just made it up. A woman who enjoys eating is incredibly attractive. I can't bear women who go, "No, well I...." It's so unsexy.

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[Q] Playboy: You've acted with Calista Flock-hart in A Midsummer Night's Dream and starred with Isabella Rossellini in two of your own films. Do both actresses have healthy appetites?

[A] Tucci: I never ate with Calista. Isabella is a good eater, I know that [laughter] . The first time I met her, we went to her house and she actually made risotto. When our babies were born, my wife and I had lunch with her and we went to a restaurant and she had pasta and wine. She's a good eater.

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[Q] Playboy: We assume the signature dish in Big Night, timpano, a drum-shaped crust filled with pasta, is only to be attempted by serious, well-trained cooks. Can the writer, director and star of Big Night offer a recipe for the rest of us?

[A] Tucci: You should have some knowledge of cooking when you do a timpano. It's going to take a long time and you may fail at first. But don't be afraid to try it, because the experience of making it is so much fun, and if you have the right people together, it's worth it. My suggestion: Make a frittata. I made one just the other day. Heat some regular or extra-virggion olive oil, put three eggs in a bowl, whip them up, add whatever you want. I add a little parsley, basil, mushrooms. But sauté the mushrooms first. Sometimes I just lay the eggs in the pan and put in a little goat cheese and after it has cooked a little, I flip it over and that's that. Or you can add manchego, a Spanish sheep's milk cheese, which is my new favorite cheese. It's great.

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[Q] Playboy: Is Sunday dinner an important occasion for the Tucci family?

[A] Tucci: In fact, I just made a big Sunday dinner for the first time in a long time. With my hectic schedule lately and the babies and everything, it had faded away. But it will all come back again. I like to watch the Food Network when I'm exercising. Mario Batali made what looked like an incredible dish with quail wrapped in prosciutto, with a little balsamic vinegar. That's what I made. With risotto on the side. It was fantastic.

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[Q] Playboy: A food critic for a major newspaper claims she would have awarded Paradiso, the fictional restaurant in Big Night, "three, possibly four, stars." Do you have your toque ready if the acting gig ever goes south?

[A] Tucci: That's nice, but she wouldn't have if she'd tasted the food we were eating. It was awful. We tried with the catering, but we didn't have a lot of money and the food we were eating during the filming was atrocious. It had no seasoning because it goes bad quickly if it's seasoned and it has to sit around for a long time. When you're sitting in a hot room for 13 hours a day and you're under those hot lights, who wants to eat? No one's hungry. So we had spit buckets. Actors would eat the food and go "yum yum" and then "cut!" And yuck!

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[Q] Playboy: You're frank about your enthusiasm for the Thirties, Forties and Fifties. Aren't those seamed stockings actresses wear in your films a wonderful evocation of those decades?

[A] Tucci: I'll tell you the truth. There's something there. The whole ethic of being more elegant makes a woman very sexy. There's something about getting dressed in all that stuff. The French say that it's much sexier to watch a woman get dressed than to watch her get undressed. I agree. I believe it's so sexy, especially if there are stockings she has to put on.

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[Q] Playboy: Do you believe a Fifties vintage Cadillac, resplendent with tail fins, is the summit of automotive design?

[A] Tucci: We used it in Big Night as a symbol for everything people thought was the summit. For me, it is not. Some of those old Porsches from the Sixties were so beautifully sculpted, beautifully rounded and sort of compact. I do not covet automobiles, but I have to say that the Avanti, designed by Raymond Loewy, is a fascinating car. Gorgeous car. I don't own one. I wish.

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[Q] Playboy: Some cities have sought to pass ordinances prohibiting actors from smoking onstage in order to protect audiences from secondhand smoke. As an actor who enjoys tobacco now and then, how do you feel about this development?

[A] Tucci: No more Noel Coward plays. Actors still smoke, and thank God it's alive and well. I was just working in England and we know all the British actors are still smoking. There were 16 in the cast and I think everybody smoked except for two. Soon they'll stop us from drinking onstage too. Then you can't do Shakespeare. And no dancing!

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[Q] Playboy: Last year you played Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare has had other recent successes as a screenwriter. Do you think Hollywood's green-lighting the Bard's scripts will make high school sophomores into fans?

[A] Tucci: Definitely. It's wonderful. But you have to be careful not to go too far, to pander too much. Or put people in a movie who may not be able to act Shakespeare, like some kid from a TV show who can't act. So you have to know what character you're playing and what sounds would be appropriate. You don't have to speak with a British accent, but you can change your sounds to what is appropriate. The way I'm speaking right now is standard American English. My "r's" are a little harder but you can level those out. Instead of a flat "a" you can make it broader. It's not that hard to do, but you have to be trained. The point is to make the language clear.

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[Q] Playboy: There's a scene in Joe Gould's Secret where the characters search for a long-lost manuscript in the rubble of a building demolition site. Is it true that Stanley Tucci has done a bit of urban archeology after construction crews have quit for the day?

[A] Tucci: I used to go out at night and go into the Dumpsters when people were renovating apartments. I'd see what I could find, because it was all sculptural to me. I remember finding this length of pipe and creating a track-lighting fixture for my two-room apartment—which had very high ceilings. What I did was hang the pipe by airplane cable from one end of the living room to the other. One time I found big chunks of porcelain from an old bathtub. They were absolutely beautiful and I made a very nice little table out of them. Joe Mitchell's daughter Nora gave me one of those star fixtures they put on exterior walls to support old buildings. Mitchell had a collection of those. She also gave me two silver spoons he used to collect from hotels that no longer exist.

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[Q] Playboy: Are you and Patrick Stewart conspiring to make baldness not just tolerable but downright sexy?

[A] Tucci: I have not talked with him, but let's hope that's the result of whatever we're doing.

In LA, everybody has a script. How is that possible? It's impossible, but they do. It gets a little tedious.