Dennis Farina Movies and Career Information

Dennis Farina (born February 29, 1944) is an American film and television actor. He is a character actor, often typecast as a mobster or police officer. Farina was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Italian American parents Yolanda, a homemaker, and Joseph Farina, a Sicilian doctor. He was raised in a large family and has three brothers and three sisters. Farina served 18 years as a policeman on the Chicago police force before becoming an actor. Farina himself has stated several times that his handgun skills while on the force were so poor that his fellow officers nicknamed him 'The Great Wounder'. Farina began his work in show business working for director Michael Mann as a police consultant on Mann's early works. This led to an interest in acting when Mann cast him in a small role in the 1981 film Thief. Farina proceeded to moonlight as an actor in the Chicago theater scene before Mann chose him for his Crime Story series. Farina played the mobster Albert Lombard in Michael Mann's other television show Miami Vice. Two of his most well-known movie characters are Jimmy Serrano, the mob boss from Midnight Run, and Ray "Bones" Barboni, a rival criminal of Chili Palmer's in Get Shorty. He