Actor Joe Pantoliano: Hollywood Is Hotbed for Crazy People

'Sopranos' Star Was Alcoholic, Addict, 'Maniac!' (USA Today)

Joe Pantoliano says most people know him from one of three things: The Sopranos, Memento or The Matrix.

Maybe Risky Business.

"I spent a long time becoming a character actor," says Joey "Pants," as he is known. "The best compliment I ever get is, 'Oh, my God, I didn't even know it's you.' "

Now maybe people will get to know him as the author of Asylum, his book (out May 1 from Weinstein Books, 256 pp, $24.95) with a long subtitle: Hollywood Tales From My Great Depression: Mental Dis-Ease, Recovery and Being My Mother's Son.

"I became an alcoholic, an addict, a compulsive shopper, a kleptomaniac. And a maniac!" writes Pantoliano, 60.

He chronicles his journey as a kid in Hoboken, N.J., coping with a tough, crazy family ruled by a mother who was willful and self-centered (and, he says now, was probably bipolar) to adulthood in Hollywood, where he battled addictions to alcohol, food, sex, Vicodin and Percocet. He eventually was diagnosed with clinical depression. He calls his "self-medication" behaviors his "Seven Deadly Symptoms."