Tough Guy Joe Pantoliano Gets Tough On Mental Disease

For a long time, Joe Pantoliano didn’t know that he was clinically depressed. The actor, best known for his roles in The Sopranos and The Matrix, says he spent years not knowing why he went through his days with a debilitating sense of dread. "I felt miserable and I couldn’t understand why. Things were really good with my life and with my family, but I felt dead inside," he recalls. "I was just exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even brush my teeth." At one point, he says he was taking 14 or 15 pills of Vicodin a day. "My first thought [upon waking up in the morning] was, 'Fuck, I’m still here,'" he says.

It wasn’t until he began shooting the 2006 film Canvas, a movie about the way a family deals with mental disease, that Pantoliano started recognizing his own unhappiness as an illness.

That’s when he decided to ask for help. "I was told this is a disease. We could work on it and there are ways to fix it. I was elated by that," he explains "I realized I wasn’t alone and it wasn’t my fault."

Pantoliano wants to share this realization with the millions of Americans who also deal with mental illness: that they are not alone and that there is nothing to be ashamed of. In 2007, he started a foundation called No Kidding, Me Too! to raise awareness about mental illness and to eradicate the stigma surrounding it.

This month, which happens to be Mental Health Awareness month, Pantoliano has also thrust his own struggle with depression into the spotlight as the director and one of the subjects of the new documentary, also called No Kidding, Me Too! The film premiered on PBS May 24th and is available on DVD via Amazon.com’s CreateSpace. It features discussions with the actor as well as six others — from a brain surgeon to a war veteran to high school students — to illustrate the statistic that one in every four American adults has a diagnosable mental disorder. "The whole idea of this movie is for people to see it and say, 'Holy shit! They got what I got? No kidding, me too,'" he tells Tonic.

Getting to this point for Pantoliano wasn’t easy. During his depression, people didn’t want to be around him. "I was always seeing the worst in situations," he says. What’s more, it excluded his wife Nancy and their four children from his life.

The irony was that the depression that caused so much turmoil in his personal life actually benefited his acting. He drew on those demons to inform characters. Before seeing a doctor, Pantoliano believed delving into such dark territory was what made him depressed, "that I gave myself mental disease," he says. When he finally sought help, he learned, however, that it was the other way around: He had channeled his depression into his craft. After he realized that he did indeed have a disease, he began treatment with therapy and anti-depressants.

Being diagnosed with clinical depression and getting treatment turned out to be the easy part. He soon found that his depression made him a liability as an actor. On his first job back after being diagnosed, he went to see the production doctor, who asked Pantoliano the usual questions about his medical history. When he told the doctor he took Lipitor for his cholesterol, no questions were raised. But when he told the doctor he was on anti-depressants, Pantoliano was told he would not be insured. "I was like, 'Wait a minute. I have a history of heart disease. What if I have a heart attack?' 'We’ll insure you if you have a heart attack.' Why are you covering my heart but not covering my brain? I’m taking medication to take care of my disease," he fumed. "I thought it was just outrageous that that was their answer."

Pantoliano then started talking to his other actor friends and found that while many of them also suffered from depression, most would just lie about it to the production doctors. That’s when he decided "to bang this drum and use celebrity for good."

He turned to his celebrity friends and encouraged them to join his cause and speak out. Actors like Jeff Bridges, Harrison Ford, Bonnie Hunt and Anthony Edwards are all appearing in public service announcements imploring Americans to think about questions like: Why is mental disease the only illness you can get yelled at for having?

Pantoliano is also taking the message out on the road. He is currently on a nationwide tour to screen his documentary and raise awareness. He’s also taken the movie to high schools around the country. "When I show this to high school kids, there’s always one or two that breaks down and says, 'Mom and Dad, I need help.'"

Back home, Pantoliano is teaming with childhood friend and chef Rich Pepe to create a pasta sauce inspired by the recipes their grandparents brought with them from Italy. Called Pepe and Pants, it will be sold in grocery stores in New York with all profits going to No Kidding, Me Too! Last year, the foundation raised $300,000 and they are hoping to top that amount this year.

Pantoliano has also been invited to Iraq to speak to soldiers about mental illness. More servicemen and women have committed suicide than died in combat last year. No Kidding, Me Too! is currently working on a proposal to start a mental health USO. Pantoliano reveals: "I want to be the Bob Hope of mental disease and have bands and pretty girls and share our hope and experience. This is what I do to regulate and manage my sanity one day at a time."

Photos courtesy of NKM2.org.