![]() A better use of Assante's time was as an Acadian healer in the independent film "Belizaire, the Cajun" (1986), written and directed by Glen Petrie and shot on location in Louisiana. He next appeared opposite funnyman Dudley Moore and actress Nastassja Kinski in "Unfaithfully Yours" (1984), an amusing but inconsequential remake of the Preston Sturges classic. ![]() Growing weary of life in Hollywood, the actor relocated to upstate New York to raise his children near his parents, while frustrating publicists with his disinclination to trade on his image as a Latin lothario. Unfortunately for Assante, the film was both a critical and box office failure.Based on the trash classic by Sidney Sheldon, the NBC miniseries "Rage of Angels" (1983) widened Assante's fanbase more than all his feature films put together. As a Cuban dictator patterned after Fidel Castro, Assante was lost in the twice-baked mix of James Toback's critically-reviled "Love & Money" (1982), but proved an inspired and updated Mike Hammer in "I, the Jury" (1982), the second film adaptation of the classic pulp novel by Mickey Spillane. Gaining international attention as much from his good looks as his acting abilities, Assante was slotted into the role of an adult camp counselor who contemplates a sexual liaison with an underage girl in "Little Darlings" (1980), opposite Tatum O'Neal. Early in his career, Assante dated the actress Dyan Cannon, ex-wife of Hollywood legend Cary Grant and 12 years his senior.The Irish-Italian actor would be called upon to essay a plethora of ethnic types early in his career: an Arab in the CBS telefilm "The Pirate" (1978), an American Indian in John Frankenheimer's revenge-of-nature thriller "Prophecy" (1979), and a suave Frenchman who woos Goldie Hawn's vulnerable non-com in "Private Benjamin" (1980). ![]() Set in Hell's Kitchen during the Forties, with Assante as the ambitious brother of Stallone's amiable meathead, the film set the tone for Assante's early career as a dark-eyed actor of brooding handsomeness and banked fury. Flush from his later success as the writer and star of "Rocky" (1976), Stallone would remember Assante and cast him in his directorial debut, "Paradise Alley" (1978). An association with rising star Sylvester Stallone landed him extra work in the Columbia Pictures nostalgia piece "The Lords of Flatbush" (1974). Winning the Jehlinger Prize for promising new actors in 1969, he was invited to study opera at the Manhattan School of Music but pointed himself instead toward the life of a professional actor.During his journeyman years as a jobbing actor on Broadway and in regional theatre, Assante scored an early coup with a recurring role on the NBC soap opera "The Doctors" (1963-1982). Marines after his graduation from Cornwall High School, Assante enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. Although he had flirted with the notion of joining the U.S. Interested initially in music, Assante was a drummer for the local band the Phaeton Four, performing professionally on weekends. The middle child and only son of Armand Assante, Sr., a fine artist-turned-Madison Avenue ad man, and Katherine Healy, a published poet and teacher at the Manhattan School of Music, Assante moved with his family to the upstate New York town of Cornwall in 1957 but never forgot the lessons in tolerance and compassion he had learned in his ethically mixed neighborhood in Washington Heights. Armand Anthony Assante, Jr., was born in New York City.
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