PR.com (Allison Kugel): There was a comment you made in a voiceover at the beginning of your documentary film, No Kidding, Me Too!. You said you “were born with a hole in your heart the size of God.” Explain.

Joe Pantoliano: There’s been an emptiness inside of me that I thought was unique. I had no idea that there were millions of souls in the world that felt this and that it’s a very common feeling. I thought it was mine and that I owned it, and I was responsible for it. The idea that, you know, they [refer to] a drug as your “drug of choice,” where people are self medicating; the catch phrase is “drug of choice.” If I had a series of choices to self medicate the first one was food. I would eat whenever I was in despair or aggravated. And I also have Attention Deficit Disorder, ADHD, so sounds will take my attention away from things.

PR.com: But that was left undiagnosed when you were growing up.

Joe Pantoliano: I had no idea. I found out about two years ago. After I was diagnosed with clinical depression I started looking at my life in a cognitive way under the aid of the psychiatrist, and I was finding all of this post-traumatic stress that led my life, that lived inside of me; traumatic events in my life that were so upsetting that I would store them away and I would forget that they happened. And then if I had any memory at all I would remember them in a humorous way. So everything was funny. My mother was funny. My mother was crazy, funny, harmless, lovable…

PR.com: But she was actually clinically depressed like you?

Joe Pantoliano: My mother was bipolar, undiagnosed. My mother’s drug of choice was cigarettes, 4 packs a day, and coffee! I don’t recall watching my mother eat as much as I remember her smoking and drinking coffee with three spoons of sugar. I just wanted to feel different and food made me feel different, and then I got so fat that people would make fun of me. I wanted to be accepted and liked. When you’re fat it’s a calling card to be bullied by miserable kids, kids that want to be better than you and feel better than you because they were victims of bullying themselves. Even in my community (Pantoliano grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey) there was unintentional racism. The Irish felt better than the Italians and the Italians felt better than the Puerto Ricans. My mother used to say, “Yeah, we’re broke but at least we’re not living in the projects.”

click to read interview with Joe Pantoliano