Philip Suriano
Philip Suriano is an actor.
Five films, one of them permanent. Suriano is an American character actor whose screen record is small and heavily concentrated in a single register: mid-level mob guys, working in and around the orbit of Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci.
The permanent one is Casino. As Dominick Santoro, the younger brother of Pesci's Nicky, he is a man present in the life because of who his brother is, a figure based on the real Michael Spilotro, and Scorsese uses him as a quiet reminder of what that family arrangement costs.
Before that he was Joseph Ragucci in Lethal Weapon 2, on the losing end of a bet with Mel Gibson's Riggs and settling it with an illegal krugerrand, a scene that has outlived most of the film's supporting cast in memory.
The remaining three lean comic: a gangster in 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, Frankie Totino in the spoof Jane Austen's Mafia!, and Chet in the television revival CHiPs '99. It is a short filmography that ends up parodying the exact type it was hired to play straight, which is either a career accident or the most honest thing about it.
Movies (5)
Where to start with Philip Suriano
Watch Casino, then, if you still have the appetite, everything else. Dominick Santoro is a supporting part in a three-hour film, but it is the credit people actually look him up for, and the brother relationship with Pesci does real structural work in the story. Lethal Weapon 2 is the other reason to be here: one scene, one bet, one krugerrand, and it lands. After that, expect diminishing returns. Jane Austen's Mafia! is a broad spoof of the genre he had been playing straight, which is at least a funny place for a career to arrive. 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag is a black comedy with a good cast and little for him to do, and CHiPs '99 is pure television nostalgia.