Imperioli’s first big shot

Michael Imperioli bled for his breakthrough role, said Zach Helfand in The New Yorker. The actor was 23 when he was cast in Goodfellas as Spider, a mafia associate who gets whacked by Joe

Pesci’s hotheaded Tommy while serving drinks. Director Martin Scorsese had hired a stunt double for the murder scene. “I said, ‘I could do that,’” recalls Imperioli, 58. “Marty said, ‘Yeah, let the kid do it.’” So Imperioli was fitted with squibs, tiny explosives filled with fake blood, and handed a glass. “I did the stunt fine, but when I hit the ground, the glass broke and sliced open two of my fingers really badly.” Imperioli was rushed to a New York City ER, where his Hollywood getup duped medics. “They’re coming at me with stretchers because I have three bullet holes in my chest. They think I’m about to die. I said, ‘I’m in a movie with Robert De Niro. I cut my hand.’ They think I’m delirious.” In the trauma room, “they cut my shirt open and see all the squibbing. I said ‘I told you, I’m in a movie. Robert De Niro!’” Despite the injury, Imperioli calls his Goodfellas experience a dream come true. “To be an Italian-American, New York actor, and all of a sudden—I mean Scorsese and De Niro were idols. It was like you were playing college baseball, and suddenly you’re in the World Series at Yankee Stadium.”