Joe Pantoliano opens with his battle against mental health and the life buoy that made him advance – his dogs.
Sopranos And Sludge Star, 73, revealed in a recent interview which he had spent almost a decade fighting against unmatched clinical depression, to resort to self-medication and destructive habits to try to cope.
“Alcohol, what was available, women, you know, risky behavior, act first and ask questions in second position,” said the actor Page six THURSDAY.
Pantoliano, who played the volatile Ralph Cifaretto on HBO, winning Emmy Sopranosadmitted that he was a “waste for a long time” and attributed some of her problems to grow with a mother who also suffered from mental health challenges.
He added that her relations with his wife, actress Nancy Sheppard, and their children were also seriously tense in the process. “My wife and children were ready to throw me away,” he admitted.
“The only people who were happy to see me were not people. They were my dogs,” recalls the actor.
The last of us Star, who is currently playing in the Off-Broadway show Ginger twinshas also credited his puppies for saving his life.
“It was the only spark I had left. I was like Tinkerbell and the light was dying,” he said.
Pantoliano finally received a diagnosis of clinical depression in 2007. Two years later, he did not make me a pleasure, me too!, A non -profit organization aimed at erasing stigma around mental illness and encouraging others to ask for help.
