Alex Rocco

Everytime Afex Rocco walked into a Hollywood casting office, they'd take one look at his rugged Latin countenance and hand him a gun.
Rocco is the father of four children. In his TV series Three for the Road Alex was chosen to play the lead for this off beat face. It's not a bad face, though it's been seen on the screen in a lot of bad-guy roles. Rocco was Moe Green in "The Godfather," the film he owes
everything to, he said. He was a bank robber in "The Sons of Eddie Coyle." He played Al Capone's bodyguard in "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre." In fact, he said, "I played a bodyguard in 20 pictures. I was up for the 'Matt Helm' role and. I decided to turn in my gun. I had enough with the cops and robbers and detective crap." The actor, who has been
around Hollywood for 40 years, said his mother would be glad he's finally going the straight route on TV and films. He's from a large Boston family, with lots of nieces and nephews and three sisters, and—what—they think still means a lot to the star. A ninth grade dropout, he worked as a truck driver, then as a bartender before becoming a road manager for
Bobby Pickett, who had the hit record "Monster Mash."
"I attended Leonard Nimoy's acting class when I first came to Hollywood," he recalls. "All he had to hear me say was, 'Pak the car' in my Boston accent and off he shipped me to a speech clinic. I ended up with a New York accent." In 1975 he played the lead in a TV show, "Three for the Road" and at that juncture in his career, Rocco credits Alan Arkin for propelling him along the road to success. He got him the role in the CBS special "Twigs," with Carol Burnett. And Arkin put him in his last five films, including "Freebie and the Bean, "Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins," and the Warner Bros, film "Heart of the West."