Joe Dallesandro | |
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Dallesandro at the 2009 Seattle International Film Festival.
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Born |
Joseph Angelo D'Allesandro III December 31, 1948 Pensacola, Florida, U.S. |
Other names |
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Occupation |
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Years active | 1967–present |
Spouse(s) |
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Children | 2 |
Website | joedallesandro |
Joseph Angelo D'Allesandro III (born December 31, 1948), better known as Joe Dallesandro, is an American actor and Warhol superstar. Having also crossed over into mainstream roles like mobster Lucky Luciano in The Cotton Club, Dallesandro is generally considered to be the most famous male sex symbol of American underground films of the 20th century, as well as a sex symbol of gay subculture.
Dallesandro starred in Flesh as a teenage street hustler. Rolling Stone magazine in 1970 declared his second starring vehicle, Trash, the "Best Film of the Year", making him a star of the youth culture, sexual revolution and subcultural New York City art collective of the 1970s. Dallesandro also starred in 1972's Heat, another Warhol film that was conceived as a parody of Sunset Boulevard.
He was born in Pensacola, Florida to Joseph Angelo D'Allesandro II, who was in the U.S. Navy. His mother, Thelma Testman, was 16 years old. By the time he was five years old, she was serving five years in a Federal Penitentiary for interstate auto theft. Dallesandro and his brother Bobby were taken to New York by their father, who worked as an electrical engineer. Both boys were eventually placed into the Angel Guardian Home in Harlem, prior to being fostered by a couple in Brooklyn. The family later moved to North Babylon, Long Island. The senior D'Allesandro would visit them about once a month at their foster parents' home. Dallesandro was initially content living with his foster parents, but later reportedly began to resent them, thinking that they were preventing him from living with his father.