Chosen to play Al Capone in Giovanni Tartaglia's Capone, Louis was born in the Italian Hospital in New York City, and raised in the largest and first Little Italy in America, Italian East Harlem. ...Show More
Chosen to play Al Capone in Giovanni Tartaglia's Capone, Louis was born in the Italian Hospital in New York City, and raised in the largest and first Little Italy in America, Italian East Harlem. Louis was baptized in the Basilica of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, where he also attended grammar school. Italian East Harlem was home to 100,000 Italian Americans in it's hay day, and cultivated notables Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Congressman Vito Marcantonio, and Dr. Leonardo Covello, it's greatest teacher and scholar, who founded Benjamin Franklin High School on Pleasant Avenue. The neighborhood was also home to the Morello crime family of 116 Street, the actual Corleone family from Sicily, that the Godfather movie was modeled after, that later became the Genovese Family. Within the neighborhood, the compelling combined factors of the Great Depression, prohibition, and profound discrimination against the Italian Americans, gave rise to three of the New York crime families, and the additional notorious crime crew the renegade Purple Gang. The actual Purple Gang's genesis was chronicled years earlier as the teen gang portrayed in Burt Lancaster's "The Young Savages". Louis grew up in the fertile neighborhood that percolated such movie notables as Burt Lancaster, Al Pacino, Anthony Franciosa, and Sonny Grosso. In Addition, the neighborhood gave rise to Salvatore Lombino, the great mystery writer, who wrote the screen play to Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds", and "Black Board Jungle", under the name Evan Hunter. His police dramas became the basis of the TV show "Hill Street Blues". Also from Italian Harlem, was the great American playwright Arthur Miller, as were infamous wiseguys, Tony Salerno, Joey Rao, John Gotti, and Trigger Mike Coppola. Louis began his acting career while attending college focusing on media and communication, and acted in three student films at NYU, including an appearance as a mafiosi in "The Mott Street Mafia". Louis then earned a Masters Degree at Cal State, in Theater, Film and Television, and was awarded a two year scholarship to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. Louis was encouraged into acting after a chance meeting with screen writer and American hero Ron Kovic, because as Ron Kovick put it, "You have character actor written all over you". Louis has appeared in numerous films, TV shows and commercials in Los Angeles, and has received many compliments for his look and authentic New York accent. Hide
