Subsequent to depicting the predatory lender Michael Longo, he voiced a taxi driver in ‘Weighty Metal,' featured ‘Protesting Power' and was Jennifer Melfi's significant other on ‘The Sopranos.'
Richard Romanus, the troublemaker character entertainer most popular for his chance as Michael Longo, the Little Italy predatory lender who gets into it with Robert De Niro's Johnny Civello in Martin Scorsese's Mean Roads, has passed on. He was 80.
Romanus passed on Dec. 23 in a confidential clinic in Volos, Greece, his child, Robert Romanus, told The Hollywood Columnist.
Romanus dealt with noticeable voice jobs for Ralph Bakshi in 1977's Wizards (as the mythical person fighter Weehawk) and 1982's Hello Great Lookin' (as the head of a 1950s greaser posse), in the middle between, he played the taxi driver Harry Ravine in one more enlivened film, Weighty Metal (1981).
He additionally showed up on four episodes of The Sopranos as Richard LaPenna, the hit or miss spouse of Lorraine Bracco's Jennifer Melfi, from 1999-2002.
In Mean Roads (1973), Romanus' personality is broadly slighted by Johnny when he rests on him for his cash.
“You know, Michael, you make me chuckle,” Civello says. “I get cash all around this area, left and right from everyone, and I never take care of them. Things being what they are, I can't acquire no cash from no one no more, correct? So who might that pass on me to acquire cash from yet you?
“I acquire cash from you, since you're the main jerk-off around here who I can get cash from without payin' back, correct? You know, because that is what you are, that is my thought process of you, a jerk-off. You're grinning because you're a jerk-off. You're a fucking jerk-off! I'll let you know something different, I screw you right where you inhale, on the grounds that I don't care a whole lot about you or no other person.”
Michael, obviously, will seek his retribution making a course for Brooklyn.
The child of a dental specialist, Richard Joseph Romanus was brought into the world on Feb. 8, 1943, in Barre, Vermont, and brought up in West Hartford, Connecticut. He moved on from Xavier College in Cincinnati in 1964 with a degree in way of thinking and spent a year in graduate school prior to concentrating on acting with Lee Strasberg at Carnegie Corridor.
In 1970, he showed up on episodes of Mission: Unimaginable and The Mod Crew and in the David Janssen-featuring telefilm Night Pursue before he was recruited on Mean Roads.
His famous scene with De Niro came on the close to-last day of shooting, Scorsese reviewed in Andy Dougan's 2011 book, Distant: Robert De Niro.
“Something had occurred among Bobby and Richard on the grounds that the ill will between them in that scene is genuine, and I played on it,” the chief said. “They had gotten on one another's nerves to where I think they truly needed to kill one another. I continued to shoot a large number of takes of Bobby hollering this multitude of put-downs while the group was flying off the handle.”
Romanus said De Niro really lashed out when he saw him giggle during the rant. “By chuckling I was hiding any hint of failure. He figured I ought to seethe, however he had zero power over my responses,” he said. “Once in a while the response you get from your acting accomplice isn't the one you need. Then you just need to respond off that. Yet, in this scene I chuckled naturally. I thought Bobby was extremely amusing when he was doing that stuff. What's more, he looked ludicrous.”
Romanus spent the remainder of the ten years appearing on such shows as Rhoda, Kojak, Starsky and Pen, The Rockford Documents and Hawaii Five-O and in the film Russian Roulette (1975).
In 1981-82, he handled an ordinary job as Det. Lt. Charlie Gunzer on the super fierce ABC wrongdoing show Strike Power, featuring Robert Stack and created by Aaron Spelling, however the series was dropped after 20 episodes.
Richard Romanus in Strike Power
From left: Michael Goodwin, Robert Stack, Dorian Harewood, Trisha Honorable and Richard Romanus from the 1981-82 series Strike Power. ROBERT PHILLIPS/EVERETT Assortment
He played one more cop on another brief ABC series, Treachery, in 1981.
Romanus' list of references incorporated the movies Exposed targets (1980), Convention (1984), The Love seat Outing (1988), Oscar (1991), Final turning point (1993), Police and Robbersons (1994), Nailed (2001) and The Youthful Dark Steed (2003) and television work on Slope Road Blues, The A-Group, MacGyver, Cagney and Lacey and NYPD Blue.
Notwithstanding his child, survivors incorporate his subsequent spouse, Oscar-named ensemble fashioner Anthea Sylbert (Rosemary's Child, Chinatown, Julia), whom he wedded in August 1985, and more youthful sibling Robert Romanus, who played Mike Damone in Quick Times at Ridgemont High.
A long time back, Romanus and Sylbert moved to the Greek town of Skiathos, and he expounded on the involvement with Act III: A Little Island in the Aegean, distributed in 2011. Additionally, he wrote two books set in the nation, 2011's Chrysalis and 2014's Matoula's Reverberation.
The couple, who were pronounced privileged residents of Skiathos in 2021, likewise composed and created two Lifetime telefilms, 1998's Surrendering the Phantom and 1999's In the event that You Accept (the last option got them a WGA designation).
