One of the objects of this column is to explore the Italian ethnicity of actors and filmmakers when their heritage doesn’t appear obvious at a first glance.
An Italian last name is always a giveaway but there are often cases of stars who don’t carry an Italian name or don’t play an Italian character on the screen, yet they have Italian blood in their veins and they are very proud of it. Jason Biggs is one of those actors. In films and shows he often plays a Jewish character, in fact he’s often typecast as Jewish, but he really isn’t.
It would be anybody’s guess from his last name but Biggs’ heritage for the greater part is Italian. His father Gary is half English (where the last name comes from) and half Italian. Jason’s paternal grandmother, Assunta Furno, was a Neapolitan woman and all of her relatives were from Napoli. Jason’s mother, Angela Zocco, is from Sicily, so is the rest of the family. This all came to a surprise to me when I started a conversation with him and Jason, recognizing my accent, started speaking in Italian. It turns out Biggs speaks the language perfectly.
After asking me where I was from he told me he took Italian classes in high school back in Pompton Plains, New Jersey to keep his family traditions alive. He doesn’t have many chances to practice it these days, but it still sounded pretty good. Jason was raised Roman Catholic and started acting and going to auditions at a pretty young age. His shot to fame, as many already know, came when he was cast in American Pie in 1999. Still a teenager at the time, Biggs embodied the awkward and timid young American with hormones running amok.
The international success of the film worked as a major platform for all the actors involved, as the cast was made primarily of relatively unknown at the time. Biggs, being the protagonist, saw his career skyrocketing and capitalized on it by taking part in other teen comedies, such as Loser and Saving Silverman which basically required him to play a similar character.
Wanting to break away from the image that came from those teen movies he decided to go back to theatre, ten years after Conversations with my father, his first play where it had all started. When he heard of the production of The Graduate based on the classic film with Dustin Hoffman he fought hard to get part. Auditioning for the role also meant getting approval from his costar Kathleen Turner, who had successfully playing Mrs Robinson in London and was going to reprise the role in the US shows.
Among Biggs’ memories of the experience is the professionalism and dedication to the material of Turner. The award winning actress could switch in and out of an accent with extreme ease and was able to carry on with the show even when somebody in the audience was shouting slurs because of her full frontal nudity on stage. As Biggs recalls something like that would come as a distraction to say the least, yet Turner didn’t miss a beat and carried on like the pro that she is. The whole experience served as an inspiration for Biggs who admired such commitment to the work and felt he needed to gravitate towards more rewarding roles.
In the middle of production came a call from Woody Allen who wanted him for Anything else. As many actors aspire to working with Allen, this was an opportunity not to be missed, even if it meant leaving the play for the duration of filming. Needless to say Turner wasn’t happy about his leave of absence and when he finally came back he felt something changed in the dynamics. Allen too was surprised to learn that Biggs is Catholic. When he cast the actor and during most of the shoot, he was under the impression that Biggs was Jewish.
In the film, he plays a young Manhattan writer who falls in love with the lively Christina Ricci, moves in with her and watches his life gradually fall apart. Allen was at the point of passing the baton to different actors to actually play him and all of his archetypal neuroses. For Biggs it represented a very unique experience as he had to channel the typical Woody Allen character without copying him, while also having to interact with Allen himself playing a different role. Sometimes, he says, he would get very specific directions, some others there would be room for improvisation, but that feeling of playing a younger version of Allen was always there.
These days Biggs is in the hit show Orange is the new black where he plays a more dramatic role, something again he had to work hard to get. Because Hollywood tends to always put a label on actors, Biggs gets offered comedic roles all the time, but to pursue different parts he has to audition like everybody else, proving that he is not just the guy from American Pie.
As of recent there is also been some controversy about his brutal honesty and crude humor on his twitter account. In a world where the wall between fans and celebrities has been coming down to social media, Biggs’ choice of being direct and true to himself instead of using it only for self promotion, can only be appreciated.
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