{"id":776732,"date":"2026-09-20T11:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T11:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/776732\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T11:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T11:20:11","slug":"the-1989-role-joe-pesci-lied-to-be-cast-in-because-he-needed-a-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/776732\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1989 role Joe Pesci lied to be cast in because he “needed a job”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Joe<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ Warner Bros.<\/p>\n

Sun 20 September 2026 1:30, UK <\/p>\n

Joe Pesci<\/a> was never exactly meant to become a Hollywood star. Starting his career in the spotlight as a kid, spurred on by his father. As a youngster, he appeared in various plays and TV shows before eventually becoming a barber.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet, the call of stardom was too much to ignore. Having played a vital role in the formation of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons when he was a young performer, singing always found a significant place in his heart, and Pesci would release his debut album, Little Joe Sure Can Sing!, in 1968.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until he appeared in the low-budget film The Death Collector in 1976 that he lit the fuse that would subsequently catapult him into Oscar nominee territory<\/a>. His performance was seen by Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, \u2018New Hollywood\u2019 figureheads who knew that Pesci was the perfect person to play Joey LaMotta in their upcoming biographical sports drama Raging Bull.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Things were different back then; Scorsese and De Niro simply rang Pesci themselves, to which the budding actor was convinced he\u2019d become the victim of a cruel prank. He called them back, though, just to be sure, and soon enough, he\u2019d bagged the part that would earn him an Oscar nomination.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He went from having limited acting experience to competing against the likes of Timothy Hutton and Jason Robards, and soon after he landed more high-profile movies, such as Once Upon a Time in America, also starring De Niro. <\/p>\n

He appeared in various crime and thriller movies throughout the \u201880s, and even the Michael Jackson movie Moonwalker<\/a>, but by the end of the decade, he found himself having to lie to bag a part in a certain film. Just because he\u2019d been an Oscar nominee a few years earlier didn\u2019t mean that he wasn\u2019t struggling to consistently land more roles, so he had to get a little creative.<\/p>\n

He was after a part in 1989\u2019s Lethal Weapon 2, which came just two years after the first installment in the Mel Gibson and Danny Glover-led franchise.<\/a> You\u2019d think he\u2019d have it easy, but Pesci revealed on CBS News that \u201cI started to lie, because I needed a job.\u201dPesci continued, \u201cI was telling Dick Donner [director] and Joel Silver [producer], I have a problem going in and reading for a part. It\u2019s just something I need to spend time with, and live with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further reading: Cutting Room Floor<\/p>\n

Obviously, that wasn\u2019t the case. \u201cSo, I kept telling them, \u2018I can\u2019t read for you, but you gotta trust me, I know how to play this guy.\u2019\u201d It was as easy as that. \u201cAnd so, they said, \u2018Okay, let him go; the guy\u2019s a good actor.\u2019\u201d Pesci managed to charm them into giving him the role of Leo Getz, a character he\u2019d reprise in the third and fourth entries of the buddy cop franchise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sometimes, then, you just have to concoct a fib or two to get yourself where you want to be. You don\u2019t need to feel guilty; big stars, like Pesci, do it all the time, and it gets them exactly what they want. Not only that, but a year after lying his way into Lethal Weapon 2, he\u2019d bag an Oscar for Goodfellas, and he wouldn\u2019t have to lie to get a role again.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Warner Bros. Sun 20 September 2026 1:30, UK Joe Pesci was never exactly meant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[30275,206867,27787,213929,96,59035,26011,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-776732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-1980s","tag-206867","tag-action-movies","tag-comedy-movie","tag-entertainment","tag-joe-pesci","tag-mel-gibson","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}