Early life

Robert Miano was born in New York City and raised in the Southeast Bronx area.

At the age of 15, he started a fledgling singing career when a talent agent heard him singing with a doo-wop group on a Bronx street corner. This would lead to a recording of "Kingdom Of Love" by the Preludes on the Cub Label, a new subsidiary of MGM Records.

Years later, at an open casting call, Robert auditioned for the lead rock singer in the play "Satyricon". He landed the role. The musical was presented at the Stratford Shakespearean festival in Ontario, Canada and was a success. Afterwards, he traveled to Europe. He spent the next 2 years traveling around the world as a troubadour. Miano earned his living by singing and playing his guitar on the streets, in restaurants and bars wherever he found an audience.

Career

Miano started his film career in 1972 in New York, when director Michael Winner

Michael Winner

Michael Robert Winner is a British film director and producer, active in both Europe and the United States, also known as a food critic for the Sunday Times.-Early life and early career :...

 cast him as one of the muggers in the original Death Wish

Death Wish (film)

Death Wish is a 1974 crime thriller film loosely based on the novel Death Wish by Brian Garfield. The film was directed by Michael Winner and stars Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey, a man who becomes a vigilante after his wife is murdered and his daughter is sexually assaulted by muggers.The film was...

with Charles Bronson

Charles Bronson

Charles Bronson , born Charles Dennis Buchinsky was an American actor, best-known for such films as Once Upon a Time in the West, The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, Rider on the Rain, The Mechanic, and the popular Death Wish series...

.

Soon afterwards, director Howard Koch

Howard Koch

Howard Koch is the name of:* Howard Koch , American screenwriter* Howard W. Koch , American film and TV director, producer* Hawk Koch , American film producer...

, familiar with Miano from his singing career, offered Robert a role in the movie Badge 373

Badge 373

Badge 373 is a 1973 crime thriller film inspired, as was The French Connection, by the life and career of Eddie Egan, here called "Eddie Ryan"...

with Robert Duvall

Robert Duvall

Robert Selden Duvall is an American actor and director. He has won an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and a BAFTA over the course of his career....

.

Miano moved to Los Angeles and as spent the last 30 years as a character actor, appearing in over 100 feature films and numerous television programs. He is perhaps best known for repeatedly playing mobster characters.

One of Miano's most notable film credits came by portraying real-life Bonanno crime family

Bonanno crime family

The Bonanno crime family is one of the "Five Families" that dominates organized crime activities in New York City, United States, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as the Mafia ....

 capo

Capo

A capo is a device used on the neck of a stringed instrument to shorten the playable length of the strings, hence raising the pitch. It is frequently used on guitars, mandolins, and banjos. G.B...

 Alphonse "Sonny Red" Indelicato in the 1997 film Donnie Brasco

Donnie Brasco (film)

Donnie Brasco is a 1997 crime drama film directed by Mike Newell, starring Al Pacino, Johnny Depp and Michael Madsen. It is loosely based on the real-life events of Joseph D. Pistone, an FBI agent who infiltrated the Bonanno crime family, one of the Mafia's Five Families based in New York City...

, alongside Al Pacino

Al Pacino

Alfredo James "Al" Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy and Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way, though he has also appeared...

, Michael Madsen

Michael Madsen

Michael Søren Madsen is an American actor, poet, and photographer. He has appeared in more than 150 films, most of them small independent films, though he has starred in central roles in such films as Reservoir Dogs, Free Willy, Donnie Brasco, and Kill Bill, in addition to a supporting role in Sin...

 and Johnny Depp

Johnny Depp

John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...

. He also co-starred in the film The Funeral

The Funeral (1996 film)

The Funeral is a 1996 American crime-drama film directed by Abel Ferrara and starring Christopher Walken, Chris Penn, Annabella Sciorra, Isabella Rossellini, Vincent Gallo, Benicio del Toro and Gretchen Mol....

, with Christopher Walken

Christopher Walken

Christopher Walken is an American stage and screen actor. He has appeared in more than 100 movies and television shows, including Joe Dirt, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, The Prophecy trilogy, The Dogs of War, Sleepy Hollow, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New...

, Chris Penn

Chris Penn

Christopher Shannon "Chris" Penn was an American film and television actor known for his roles in such films as The Wild Life, Reservoir Dogs, Footloose, Rush Hour, True Romance, All the Right Moves and Pale Rider.-Early life:Penn was born in Los Angeles, California, the youngest son of Leo Penn,...

 and Benicio del Toro

Benicio del Toro

Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sánchez is a Puerto Rican and Spanish actor and film producer. He won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a BAFTA Award for his role as Javier Rodríguez in Traffic . He is also known for his roles as Fred Fenster in The Usual...

.

One of his most notable television performances came in 1994 and 1995 with his re-occurring role of Bronx mob boss Joe Scully on the soap opera

Soap opera

A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...

 General Hospital

General Hospital

General Hospital is an American daytime television drama that is credited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running American soap opera currently in production and the third longest running drama in television in American history after Guiding Light and As the World Turns....

. There his character was revealed to be the one-time mentor and possible future rival to resident mobster Sonny Corinthos

Sonny Corinthos

Michael "Sonny" Corinthos, Jr. is a fictional character on the popular ABC soap opera General Hospital. Maurice Benard has played the role, that of a manic depressive Mob boss living in Port Charles, since the character's storyline originated on August 13, 1993...

.

Miano also played a mobster character called Frank "Frankie Eyes" Chalmers on the sci-fi series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a science fiction television series set in the Star Trek universe...

and real-life Mafia

Mafia

The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...

 boss Vito Genovese

Vito Genovese

Vito "Don Vito" Genovese was an Italian mafioso who rose to power in America during the Castellammarese War to later become leader of the Genovese crime family. Genovese served as mentor to future mob boss Vincent "The Chin" Gigante...

 in the 1999 made-for-TV movie Lansky

Lansky (film)

Lansky is a 1999 American made-for-television crime drama film. Directed by John McNaughton, it stars Richard Dreyfuss as the famous gangster Meyer Lansky, Eric Roberts as Bugsy Siegel, and Ryan Merriman as the young Lansky.-Plot summary:...

, written by David Mamet

David Mamet

David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...

.

External links