Edoardo Ballerini

Ballerini is a frequent and award winning audiobook narrator. In 2007 he recorded his first book, Machiavelli's The Prince, as a favor for a friend who was starting a new studio. Ballerini considers Beautiful Ruins (2012) to be a career changing moment; prior to this he had only recorded a few books, and its success catapulted his audiobook career. Beautiful Ruins won the Audio Publishers Association award for best audiobook of the year on the solo male narrator category.

His directorial debut, Good Night Valentino, premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. Ballerini starred in the film as silent film idol Rudolph Valentino. Eva Guggenheim was one of the producers for the short film.

Ballerini was cast as the "star chef" in Bob Giraldi's Dinner Rush (2001) opposite Danny Aiello. The film grossed only $638,227 but received largely positive reviews. Internationally, the film did much better and broke into the top ten in box office receipts in Japan in 2003.

Ballerini moved to Los Angeles in 2000 before eventually returning to the New York area, where he continues his career. Ballerini has a small sound studio in his house where he records books; the house was once owned by a silent movie star.

Ballerini's first professional role was as an autistic teenager on Law & Order (1995). Two years later, he starred in the John Leguizamo comedy The Pest (1997) and, after that, appeared in Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco (1998) and Amos Kollek's Sue (1998).

Ballerini made his first professional appearance on stage as a child in 1980 at Theater for the New City, New York, in Mario Prosperi's "Uncle Mario." He subsequently joined the Italian Commedia dell'arte troupe for several performances. Stage credits as an adult include Stefanie Zadravec's "Honey Brown Eyes" (Theater Row), John Jesurun's "Chang in a Void Moon" (The Kitchen), "The End of Cinematics" (St. Ann's Space), "Crossroads" (The Henry Street Settlement), and several pieces in "The Eugene O'Neill Project" (The Actors Studio, The Eugene O'Neill Center).

Edoardo Ballerini (born March 20, 1970) is an Italian-American actor, audiobook narrator, writer, director and film producer. He is known for his work on screen as junkie Corky Caporale in The Sopranos (2006–2007), Ignatius D'Alessio in Boardwalk Empire, a hotheaded chef in the indie hit Dinner Rush (2001), and an NFL businessman in the blockbuster Romeo Must Die (2000). He has appeared in numerous films and television series, from I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) to the Omphalos (2013).

The same year, Ballerini wrote, directed and starred in a short film about 1920s film icon Rudolph Valentino. The film premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and was entered into the permanent archive at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. The film was also presented at the National Museum of Cinema in Turin, Italy in 2009 as part of a Valentino retrospective. Emily Leider, in her biography of Valentino titled Dark Lover (2003), wrote that Ballerini "infuses his [Valentino] with exactly the right mix of pride, elegance, grace and anguish... on screen, Ballerini's resemblance to Valentino is uncanny."

Ballerini was also cast as another famous 1920s Italian, the anarchist and labor leader Carlo Tresca, in No God, No Master (2011).