Celebrity Biographies
Dennis Farina
Dennis Farina was a regular Hollywood sidekick recognizable by his trademark mustache. The actor, remembered above all for his role as detective Joe Fontana in “Law and Order”, died on July 22, 2013 at his residence in Scottsdale (Arizona), as a result of a pulmonary embolism.
Born on February 29, 1944, Dennis Farina belonged to a large family of Italian emigrants. The man who was destined to play a multitude of law enforcement officers and mobsters was a real cop, in Chicago, from 1967 to 1985. When he left the force, he practiced for a time as a private detective.
He began in the cinema at the hands of director Michael Mann , who signed him as a police adviser, and gave him a small role in the film Ladrón . The filmmaker was so delighted with his work that he later gave him the role of mobster Albert Lombard in the Miami Vice series , while Farina was beginning to take his first steps in the theater.
He was a mob boss in Midnight Run , and rival gangster to Chili Palmer ( John Travolta ) in How to Win Hollywood . He also played an FBI agent in Hunter , the first Hannibal Lecter film, directed by Mann. After actor Jerry Orbach stepped down from playing one of the key characters in Law & Order , Farina was recruited to the series, for which he gained enormous recognition.
Married to Patricia Farina, from whom he divorced in 1980, Farina was the father of three children. He lived for a long time with Marianne Cahill, his girlfriend. In 2008 he was arrested for carrying a .22 caliber pistol at the Los Angeles airport. He claimed that he had forgotten that he had it with him and that he never intended to put it on a plane. He finally just had to pay a fine. In recent times, he was again recruited by Mann for the series Luck , which was canceled prematurely.