Chazz Palminteri retraces his long, tough road home
If Chazz Palminteri had never met Irving “Swifty” Lazar, none of it might have happened.
The encounter between the actor and the late career-making talent agent took place in Los Angeles in the late 1980s. Palminteri, a native New Yorker, had recently moved to California and landed small parts in Hill Street Blues, Dallas, Matlock and several other television series. Lazar was a powerful force who could boost him to the next level.
As it happened, the two did not convene in an office or over lunch on some sun-splashed Beverly Hills terrace. Instead they crossed paths outside a Los Angeles nightclub, where Palminteri, whose luck had gone south, was working as a doorman. Not recognizing Lazar, he barred the agent from entering.
“He said on the spot he would get me fired,” Palminteri recalled recently, “and he was true to his word. I left and went home to my apartment in North Hollywood and sat on the edge of my bed. ‘What the hell,’” he wondered, “‘am I going to do?’” He had $187 to his name at the time. Read more..
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