.::DICEMBRE 2004::.

Shall We Dance, a new film from Miramax, is centered around its handsome leading man, Richard Gere. Nevertheless, co-star Stanley Tucci manages to steal every scene that he is in. The storyline features Gere and Tucci as accountants, co-workers who are getting bored with the mind-numbing number crunching they do for a large accounting firm in the Midwest, calculations that seem to reduce a human life according to its deficits. Each man has a secret joy, however: indulging in after-work ballroom dance classes at Miss Mitzi's Studio. When Gere recognizes his bald colleague gyrating under a long black wig, Tucci confesses his passion: "I'm the only hetero guy on earth who likes spinning around, wearing sequins." A hilarious scene is set in a men's room where Tucci sneaks in a demonstration of salsa steps. When colleagues open the restroom door, rather than risk ridicule, Tucci collapses in Gere's arms, as if he's having heart trouble. A third generation Italian-American, Tucci is more famous for cooking onscreen than doing the cha-cha. "I didn't know how to dance before I shot the movie and I still don't know how to dance," he admits. "That's why they say movies are pure make-believe." The setting isn't quite real either. To save money, the filmmakers shot most of the "Chicago scenes" in Canada. While the rest of the crew was exploring Winnipeg and Manitoba between takes, Tucci had to make tracks back to Westchester County. "Every time I got three days off, I flew back to Katonah to spend time with my family, so I didn't get the opportunity to go sightseeing." He found the commute to and from New York exhausting and frustrating. He adds, "Canada is a beautiful place to film but I have problems when the setting of a movie is so specifically American. Shall We Dance takes place in The Windy City, which is where we should have filmed it, but I understand the economics of film." Never one to stand still in his career, Tucci has written a few TV pilots for HBO. He's also working on a screenplay about the sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti. "Writing and directing are as much my passions as acting," says Tucci, who was born in 1960 and has performed for more than 20 years. In 1982, Tucci made his stage debut in "The Queen and the Rebels," starring Colleen Dewhurst. In 1985, he had his feature debut in the film "Prizzi's Honor."

Honored for his work in films and on television, Tucci won a Golden Globe Award and earned an Emmy Award nomination for his chilling portrayal of Adolf Eichman in the HBO docudrama "Conspiracy." In 1999, he won Emmy and Golden Globe Awards and was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance in the title role of the HBO biopic "Winchell." A few years prior to that, Tucci had been recognized for his work on both sides of the camera for the widely praised independent feature "Big Night," which he co-wrote, co-directed and co-produced, as well as starred in. "Big Night" brought Tucci an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay, a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best New Director, the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, a Recognition of Excellence Award from the National Board of Review, and the Boston Society of Film Critics Awards for Best Screenplay and Best New Filmmaker. He also garnered Independent Spirit Award nominations for Best Male Lead and Best First Feature for his work on the film. Tucci's follow-up project, "The Imposters," which he wrote, directed, produced and starred in, was an Official Selection at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. Another fire burning in him is a fierce pride in his Italian heritage. And he hates the way Italians are usually portrayed in Hollywood films. "Unfortunately," he says, "the prevailing view of Italian-Americans in this country is that they're gangsters. Everyone is mob-connected, and sits around eating spaghetti and meatballs." That's one of the reasons he made "Big Night," to show that's not true. "Italians have given the world so much, and it's unfortunate that in America we don't recognize how much we've gotten from them. Literature, film, you look at design, you look at teachers." This subject is serious to him and it sounds as if he may have articulated several of these sentiments before. He continues: "I think the largest number of lawyers and doctors in America are Italian. But what do you see in movies? Gangsters. Over and over and over again. My dad was an art teacher; his brother was an architect and interior designer. My grandfather was a stone-cutter; Robert De Niro's father was a painter. Why aren't worthy, complex, and intelligent Italian-American figures portrayed onscreen?" If Stanley Tucci has his way, Alberto Giacometti might be getting ready for his close-up.