Joe Grifasi

Joe Grifasi

Birthday: 1944-06-14

Place of Birth: Buffalo - New York - USA

Biography: Joseph G. "Joe" Grifasi (born June 14, 1944) is an American character actor of film, stage and television. Born in Buffalo, New York, Grifasi joined the U.S. Army prior to studying acting. He has appeared in more than 50 feature films including Presumed Innocent, The Deer Hunter, Big Business, Beaches, Auto Focus, Matewan, Naked Gun, Dark Matter, Natural Born Killers, Chances Are, Changing Lanes, One Fine Day, F/X, Benny & Joon, The Pope of Greenwich Village, Brewster’s Millions, Batman Forever, The Flamingo Kid, Ironweed, and Splash. His television credits include The Bronx is Burning (as Yogi Berra), 61* (as Phil Rizzuto), Law & Order, ER, LA Law, Chicago Hope, Hill Street Blues, SCTV, Roseanne, and The Practice. Grifasi’s Broadway credits include Dinner at Eight, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, A Memory of Two Mondays, Boy Meets Girl, The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, The 1940’s Radio Hour and Happy End. His off-Broadway credits include Conversations in Tusculum, The Boys Next Door (Drama Desk Nomination), Once Around the City, Golden Boy, Filumena and Says I, Says He. He has been married to jazz soprano saxophonist and composer Jane Ira Bloom, whom he met while studying at the Yale School of Drama, since 1974.

Movies

City of Hope
City of Hope

This gritty inner-city film follows various people living in a troubled New Jersey setting, most not...

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A Crime
A Crime

Vincent's life is on hold until he finds his wife's killer. Alice, his neighbor, is convinced she ca...

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Batman Forever
Batman Forever

Batman faces off against two foes: the schizophrenic, horribly scarred former District Attorney Harv...

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The Feud
The Feud

All Dolph Beeler wanted was a can of paint remover when he went to Bud Bullard's hardware store in M...

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Chances Are
Chances Are

Louie Jeffries is happily married to Corinne. On their first anniversary, Louie is killed crossing t...

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Will There Really Be a Morning?
Will There Really Be a Morning?

This is the story of actress Frances Farmer, her struggles with mental illness and involuntary confi...

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Benny & Joon
Benny & Joon

A mentally ill young woman finds her love in an eccentric man who models himself after Buster Keaton...

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Brewster's Millions
Brewster's Millions

Monty Brewster, an aging minor-league baseball player, stands to inherit $300 million if he can succ...

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Presumed Innocent
Presumed Innocent

Rusty Sabich is a deputy prosecutor engaged in an obsessive affair with a coworker who is murdered. ...

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One Fine Day
One Fine Day

Melanie Parker, an architect and mother of Sammy, and Jack Taylor, a newspaper columnist and father ...

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The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter

A group of working-class friends decide to enlist in the Army during the Vietnam War and finds it to...

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The Hudsucker Proxy
The Hudsucker Proxy

A naive business graduate is installed as president of a manufacturing company as part of a stock sc...

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Still of the Night
Still of the Night

When one of his patients is found murdered, psychiatrist Dr. Sam Rice is visited by the investigatin...

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The Pope of Greenwich Village
The Pope of Greenwich Village

Charlie and his troublesome cousin Paulie decide to steal $150000 in order to back a "sure thing" ra...

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Two Bits
Two Bits

It's a hot summer day in 1933 in South Philly, where 12-year old Gennaro lives with his widowed mom ...

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The Elephant Man
The Elephant Man

A taped version of the stage play about a hideously deformed 19th-century London man and how he mana...

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Lewis Black: Red, White & Screwed
Lewis Black: Red, White & Screwed

Lewis Black stars in his second HBO solo special, an all-new hour of frenetic, take-no-prisoners sta...

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Endgame
Endgame

Endgame tells the story of Hamm, who is reduced to living in one room, in which he sits blind and ch...

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The Other Me
The Other Me

When Will Browning is threatened with military summer school if he doesn't get better grades, he dec...

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Honky Tonk Freeway
Honky Tonk Freeway

Ticlaw, a small town in Florida, has only one attraction: a safari park. The government constructs a...

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Hide in Plain Sight
Hide in Plain Sight

True story of a man in search of his children after his ex-wife enters the Witness Protection Progra...

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The Front
The Front

A detective uncovers a sinister conspiracy when he is sent to research a disintegrating neighborhood...

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The Appointments of Dennis Jennings
The Appointments of Dennis Jennings

Dennis Jennings is an introverted daydreamer, sleepwalking through life. He is a professional waiter...

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The Deal
The Deal

A big-idea farce about big, badass businessmen....

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The Dreams of Rene Sendam
The Dreams of Rene Sendam

Rene Sendam is deeply troubled. A lonely graduate student studying poetry and an often alienating ec...

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Radium Girls
Radium Girls

Young women toiling in a factory are exposed to hazardous material which takes a disastrous toll on ...

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The Flamingo Kid
The Flamingo Kid

Brooklyn teenager Jeffrey Willis, thoroughly unhappy with his modest homestead, embraces the other-w...

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Something Short of Paradise
Something Short of Paradise

A young couple in New York are having problems with their relationship....

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The Last New Yorker
The Last New Yorker

Lifelong friends Lenny Sugarman and Ruben Liebner , both in their 70s, both dyed-in-the-wool New Yor...

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Queenie in Love
Queenie in Love

A quirky, romantic New York comedy about the pursuit of love, life and the right to be yourself....

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Matewan
Matewan

Filmed in the coal country of West Virginia, "Matewan" celebrates labor organizing in the context of...

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On the Yard
On the Yard

Chilly is "top con" on the yard, a title that gives him absolute power. Power to make the rules. Pow...

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Splash
Splash

A successful businessman falls in love with the girl of his dreams. There's one big complication tho...

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Looking for an Echo
Looking for an Echo

The lead singer of an oldies group reminisces about the good ol' days and a potential comeback....

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Big Business
Big Business

In the 1940s in the small town of Jupiter Hollow, two sets of identical twins are born in the same h...

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The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!

When the bumbling Lieutenant Frank Drebin investigates events following the shooting of his partner,...

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F/X
F/X

A movies special effects man is hired by a government agency to help stage the assassination of a we...

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Heavy
Heavy

Victor is a cook who works in a greasy roadside restaurant owned by his mother, Dolly. It's just the...

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Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult
Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult

Frank Drebin is persuaded out of retirement to go undercover in a state prison. There he has to find...

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A Jersey Tale
A Jersey Tale

Jersey City teen Ray Ray Morales is wasting time in a low paying job until a local loan shark offers...

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Money Train
Money Train

When a vengeful New York transit cop decides to steal a trainload of subway fares, his foster brothe...

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The American Side
The American Side

Following a mysterious suicide at Niagara Falls, a low-rent detective unravels a conspiracy to build...

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A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream

A recording of Julie Taymor's New York stage production of William Shakespeare's comedy....

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Shadow of a Doubt
Shadow of a Doubt

Charlie Sloan is an alcoholic defence lawyer drawn back into the courtroom by Robin Harwell, a woman...

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Kojak: Ariana
Kojak: Ariana

One of Kojak's old enemies uses Ariana, a young Greek girl, as bait to trap the legendary New York d...

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Primary Motive
Primary Motive

In this political thriller, a gubernatorial candidate's idealistic press secretary discovers that th...

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13 Going on 30
13 Going on 30

After total humiliation at her thirteenth birthday party, Jenna Rink wants to just hide until she's ...

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Natural Born Killers
Natural Born Killers

Two victims of traumatized childhoods become lovers and serial murderers irresponsibly glorified by ...

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Baked in Brooklyn
Baked in Brooklyn

A recent college graduate decides to sell marijuana on the streets of Manhattan after losing his job...

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Switching Goals
Switching Goals

Twin sisters Emma and Sam come up with a scheme to switch places so each can play in the soccer team...

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The Out-of-Towners
The Out-of-Towners

The adventures of married couple Henry and Nancy Clark, vexed by misfortune while in New York City f...

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The Gentleman Bandit
The Gentleman Bandit

Based on the real-life ordeal of Baltimore priest Bernard Pagano, who was accused of several armed r...

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Undue Influence
Undue Influence

When a senator's new wife is murdered, the prime suspect is his ex-wife, Laurel. Laurel's brother-i...

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Moonstruck
Moonstruck

37-year-old Italian-American widow Loretta Castorini believes she is unlucky in love, and so accepts...

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Perfect Witness
Perfect Witness

An innocent man is thrust into a political power struggle in this drama. After witnessing a mob kill...

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Secret Service
Secret Service

Set in Richmond, Virginia in October 1864, tells the story of a Union spy working to seize control o...

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Household Saints
Household Saints

A chronicle of three generations of Italian-American women struggling to get by in post-World War II...

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61*
61*

In 1961, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle played for the New York Yankees. One, Mantle, was universally...

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Sunday
Sunday

Mistaking a homeless man for a famous director, a British actress seeks career help from him....

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Slow Burn
Slow Burn

A district attorney is involved in a 24-hour showdown with a gang leader and is, at the same time, b...

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Bad Medicine
Bad Medicine

Jeff Marx wants to study medicine and become a physician. However, his grades are far from enough to...

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Citizen Cohn
Citizen Cohn

As lawyer and power broker Roy Cohn lies dying of AIDS in a private hospital room, ghosts from his p...

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Taking the Heat
Taking the Heat

When Michael Norell witnesses a murder, he doesn't want to testify but he is forced to by the police...

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Auto Focus
Auto Focus

A successful TV star during the 1960s, former "Hogan's Heroes" actor Bob Crane projects a wholesome ...

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One Police Plaza
One Police Plaza

A veteran New York City Police Lieutenant's investigation of a woman's murder uncovers corruption in...

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Jack Reed: A Search for Justice
Jack Reed: A Search for Justice

Chicago police detective Jack Reed investigates the brutal murder of a stripper while he deals with ...

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The Naked Man
The Naked Man

A man takes matters into his own hands when a pharmaceutical kingpin moves into his town to cause so...

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Changing Lanes
Changing Lanes

A rush-hour fender-bender on New York City's crowded FDR Drive, under most circumstances, wouldn't s...

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Me To Play
Me To Play

As their bodies give way to Parkinson's disease, two New York actors put their hearts into one final...

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Ironweed
Ironweed

An alcoholic drifter spends Halloween in his hometown of Albany, New York after returning there for ...

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No Pay, Nudity
No Pay, Nudity

Aging actor Lester Rosenthal (Gabriel Byrne), who has lost his way with his career, with his family,...

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The 6th Annual Young Comedians
The 6th Annual Young Comedians

Tom and Dick Smothers are joined by some of the nation's top rising young comedians, taped at the Ro...

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Tornado
Tornado

A struggling contractor risks his young sons' well-being to cut a sweet deal....

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