Stanley Tucci, actor

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Stanley Tucci is an actor, director and writer who is known for his roles in a broad range of feature films including the Devil Wears Prada, Julie and Julia and the Hunger Games. More recently he has whetted the appetites of television viewers with his food and travel series Searching for Italy. Stanley’s grandparents left Calabria in southern Italy for a new life in America, where his parents were born. Stanley himself was born in Peekskill, New York, and grew up in the nearby hamlet of Katonah. He studied drama at the State University of New York and in 1985 made his debut in John Huston’s film Prizzi’s Honour. In 1996 he co-wrote, co-directed and starred in Big Night about two brothers who run a struggling Italian restaurant. The film was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance film Festival. In 2002 he starred in Sam Mendes’s Road to Perdition and he played a serial killer in Peter Jackson’s film the Lovely Bones. He published his first cookbook in 2012. Stanley lives in London with his wife, the literary agent Felicity Blunt, and their family. DISC ONE: Let It Be - The Beatles DISC TWO: Compared to What (Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival) - Les McCann & Eddie Harris DISC THREE: Mozart: Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622 - II. Adagio. Performed by Karl Leister (clarinet) and Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner DISC FOUR: The Weakness in Me - Joan Armatrading DISC FIVE: What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong DISC SIX: Tchaikovsky: Serenade for String Orchestra in C Major, Op. 48, TH 48 - I. Pezzo in forma di sonatina: Andante non troppo - Allegro moderato. Performed by Berliner Philharmoniker and conducted by Herbert von Karajan DISC SEVEN: A Foggy Day (In London Town) - Frank Sinatra DISC EIGHT: Not Dark Yet - Bob Dylan BOOK CHOICE: Westward Ha! by S J Perelman LUXURY ITEM: Art supplies CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Paula McGinley

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts
0:04.9	Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern, and this is the Deser Island Discs podcast.
0:08.6	Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them
0:13.9	if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:16.4	And for right reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
0:21.2	I hope you enjoy listening.
0:30.6	My cast away this week is Stanley Tucci. He's an actor, director, writer and food lover who's
0:50.7	career, like all the best dishes, took time to perfect. On screen he's a compelling presence,
0:56.4	whether he's playing a devoted spouse to Merrill Streep and Julian Julia,
1:00.3	a fashion bigwig in the Devilwears Prada, or a lilac-haired dystopian game show host in the Hunger Games.
1:06.8	He was born into an Italian-American family, and as a young man fresh out of drama school,
1:11.9	he became frustrated that casting directors tended to see him as the hard-bitten mafioso
1:16.8	character who invariably came from Brooklyn. In response, he co-wrote, co-directed and starred in
1:22.9	the multi-award-winning Big Night, a story about two Italian brothers starting a new life
1:28.5	with a restaurant in America. The 1996 film was about pie fillings rather than mob villains,
1:34.4	and was a homage to the meals he grew up eating at his family table in Catona, New York State.
1:40.3	His best-selling cookbooks provide recipes, but more than that they celebrate memory,
1:45.0	family and sheer pleasure. His recent food and travel show, Stanley Tucci searching for Italy,
1:50.9	won Emmys two years running and left viewers on both sides of the Atlantic ravenous.
1:56.6	Of his own twin appetites, he says, sometimes with acting, I think, what a beautiful thing to do,
2:02.4	and at other times I think, what a wasted life. But food, that's an end in itself.
2:07.9	Stanley Tucci, welcome to Desert Islanders. Thank you, thank you for having me.
	...

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