STANLEY TUCCI

ACTOR, writer, producer, director Stanley Tucci, 53, was born in upstate New York, the son of an art teacher and a writer with their roots in Calabria, Italy. He has a BA in drama and got his first break when the mother of a high-school friend, actor Scott Campbell, got the two boys roles as soldiers in a Broadway play. His film debut was in

Prizzi’s Honor (1985). Tucci is a passionate chef. He is married to literary agent Felicity Blunt, sister of actress Emily Blunt, his co-star in The Devil Wears

Prada . He has three children and two stepchildren.

In The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, he plays TV host Caesar Flickerman. The ghastly Caesar is an amalgam of a lot of people. The two that spring to mind are Las Vegas illusionists Siegfried and Roy, with quite a lot of English chatshow host Graham Norton thrown in. Siegfried and Roy for the tan and the teeth and Graham for the camp. You could say that Caesar is the love child of the three of them — the only question is, who carried the baby? Hunger Games may be set in a fantasy world, but it resonates on many levels. The politics and the fact that people are rising up against a totalitarian state and intolerance. It’s everyone’s worst fear to live in a non-democratic totalitarian state, with a dictator whose word is law. To have your life and your children’s lives manipulated. The theme is that you have to stand up to the tyranny of a dictatorial system, or all is lost. It’s about the consequences of war and violence and conflict. Caesar has a dreadful laugh and I have no idea where that came from. I went on set for the first time, took a breath, and out it came, quite spontaneously. I wish I could ‘Food and family. That’s

what it means to be Italian. I feel I’ve attained the American dream using

food as a metaphor’ say that I “borrowed” it, but it seems to be all mine. I use it at home whenever I want to terrify my kids into submission.

I’m as bald as a coot so Caesar’s hairpiece has to be carefully glued into place. He’s more than energetic so I am always terrified that it remains where it should be, and doesn’t fly off and injure someone in the cast or crew. It weighs a ton, with all that lacquer, and takes ages to apply.

I like extremes. I love being able to play a creepy paedophile in The Lovely Bones and then a fun dad in Easy A. The Lovely Bones was the most difficult role I’ve done and

Easy A was probably the easiest. You don’t have to worry about preparing to play the role of a father when you have children. It is much easier to make somebody cry than to make them laugh on screen. I

long to do more funny, silly roles. Being Italian, I have a lifetime of happy memories of wonderful Sunday dinners at the grandparents’ house in Westchester County, NY. Chicken soup with delicately seasoned meatballs. Rabbit. Zeppole — doughnut-shaped cookies made of twisted strands of dough. Sunday afternoons. Food and family. That’s what it means to be Italian. I feel I’ve attained the American dream using food as a metaphor.

I didn’t go to school with a lunch bag, I

went to school with a grocery bag. It typically contained two or three Italian somethings stuffed with ingredients like peppers and eggs, potatoes and eggs, or eggplant parmigiano. Occasionally, when I got weary of veal cutlet, I would sell or

exchange my food for a Fluffernutter.

Meryl Streep and I cooked a fine meal.

Before we shot Julie & Julia, about chef Julia Child, a role played by Meryl [he played her husband], I said to her: “You and I need to cook together. I don’t mean to be Method-y, but we need to be in a kitchen together.” So we cooked in her apartment in Manhattan, a proper French dinner with blanquette de veau for mains and a tarte Tatin for dessert. I try to choose roles that are good. Seriously, I look for interesting scripts, but everyone knows that you can have the best part in the world in a wonderfully written film with a great cast, director and crew, and it can still bomb at the box office.

I do a movie for all sorts of different

reasons . . . for the location, for the people you know in the cast, or a director I want to work with. I hear that some actors do roles because they get a lot of money. Can you believe that? Can’t be true, can it? —© Marianne Gray • The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is on circuit