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TV Guide
December 21, 2002
by Jennifer Graham

On The Sopranos, Furio Giunta was a cold blooded killer with a thing for the boss's wife.
But the actor who played him, has an artist's touch...

(Click on thumbnail images to enlarge)

Here's Federico Castelluccio strolling into Remi, a stylish Italian restaurant in Manhattan. This place may be a bit too rich for the blood of Mafia thug Furio Giunta, his character on HBO's "The Sopranos", but Castelluccio seems at home amid the colorful Venetian-glass chandeliers and the luminous fresco of canals and gondolas. One might expect Castelluccio to speak like the imperious Furio, who has a thick Italian accent, but when the 38-year-old actor orders a chicken salad, he sounds like a guy who just drove in from his home in Morris County, New Jersey. That is, of course, the case.

Still, the former New York City theater actor couldn't be a better choice to play Furio--a guy who left Naples to join Tony Soprano's crew in New Jersey--because, geographically speaking, he's been there, done that. "At my audition, [executive producer] David [Chase] asked, 'Where are you from?'" Castelluccio recalls. The answer: born in Naples (to a seamstress mother and artist father). And raised since age 3 in Paterson, New Jersey--not far from Tony's stomping grounds. Chase liked the answer. "The rest is history, I guess," Castelluccio says.

He then spreads a half-dozen Polaroids across the table, which show various stages of "The Sopranos" portraits that he was commissioned to paint for TV Guide. He's been working on them in the wee hours of the morning--the only time he can spare in his hectic schedule of filming, promoting the show and auditioning for future acting jobs. "Basically, I live on four hours of sleep," he says. See Federico's creative process in the pictures below.

He painted the portraits in his home studio, where he surrounds himself with serious art. There are 2,000-year-old Roman busts and 17th-century paintings, pieces from Egypt and Italy. "To know that you can actually have [museum-quality art]," he says, "and be inspired by it in your studio is amazing."

In fact, Castelluccio, who is single, is first and foremost a fine artist, a graduate of New York City's School of Visual Arts. His paintings hang in private and public collections (Whoopi Goldberg owns a Castelluccio self-portrait). The typically fetch from $15,000 to $20,000 per painting, but he has also been known to give his work away. "A number of years ago, my friend asked me to design an album cover for his rock band, Platinum," he says. When his buddy could only afford $500, the artist took pity and offered one of the paintings in his studio. "He chose this surreal self-portrait where I'm wearing a loincloth and my skin is blue," he says with a laugh.

Castelluccio is now assembling paintings for an exhibit next year. (Furio, he says, will be out of commission for a while on "The Sopranos".) He also has an Italian restaurant--Attilio's Pasta Kitchen in New Brunswick, New Jersey--which he owns with four friends, to keep him busy. And if Castelluccio tires of any of these occupations, he could always take up casting. "I brought in three people to read" for the Sopranos casting directors recently, he says, "and they chose two." Not bad for a regular guy from New Jersey.

A Guide to Federico's Creative Process

"When I saw this painting at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, it reminded me of Tony and Carmela," Castelluccio says. "They're looking at each other, but they're separated." The portrait, of Battista Sforza, Duchess of Urbino, and Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, is by 15th-century artist Piero della Francesca.	Castelluccio worked from a reproduction of the dell Francesca portraits. He placed two poplar panels on his easel and started his portraits of Tony and Carmela with an intricate pencil drawing. "I did an initial sketch, then I snapped photos of Edie [Falco] and Jim [Gandolfini] in profile," Castelluccio says.  "She thought it was a clever idea. So did Jim.
"Next, I brushed a brown tint over both drawings, which gives you an even undertone. I never work on white, because it's too stark. Then I work from dark to light. It's a technique that was used in the Renaissance."	Although della Francesca used tempera paint, Castelluccio chose oils. "I put in the background first and go to larger areas, like the clothes. Then I add a glaze. The glaze makes the paint translucent, so you can add shadows to a face."
The portraits took several weeks to complete, though Castelluccio doesn't recall exactly how long. "Hours and hours go by [when I'm painting]," he explains, "and it seems like minutes."	"The metal rod is called a maulstick. It keeps your hand off the area that's wet, and it keeps your hand steady. And then when I finish an area and it dries, I put a [clear] varnish over it so the work I've done is protected."