People

Joe Pantoliano

Acting · follow into films and chains

Biography

Joseph Peter Pantoliano (born September 12, 1951) is an American actor who has played over 150 roles across film, television, and theater. He is best known for portraying Francis Fratelli in The Goonies (1985), Captain Conrad Howard in the Bad Boys film series (1995–2024), Cypher in the Wachowskis' sci-fi action film The Matrix (1999), Teddy in Christopher Nolan's psychological thriller film Memento (2000), and Ralph "Ralphie" Cifaretto on the HBO crime drama The Sopranos (2001–2004), for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. Other notable film credits include Risky Business (1983), Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun (1987), La Bamba (1987), Midnight Run (1988), The Fugitive (1993), Baby's Day Out (1994), the Wachowskis' directorial debut Bound (1996), and Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010). In 2025, he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his performance in The Last of Us. Pantoliano has published two memoirs and is active in the field of mental health, having documented his mother's issues and his own. He founded the nonprofit No Kidding, Me Too!, which is dedicated to removing the stigma from mental illness. Description above from the Wikipedia article Joe Pantoliano, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Notable films

Where to start

Highlights from credits and KinoChain journeys.

The Matrix

As Cypher

Memento

Appears in a KinoChain journey

Empire of the Sun

Appears in a KinoChain journey

The Adventures of Pluto Nash

Appears in a KinoChain journey

Bad Boys II

As Captain Howard

Cats & Dogs

As Peek (voice)

The Fugitive

As Cosmo Renfro

Bad Boys for Life

As Captain Howard

Chains

KinoChain journeys

Public chains that pass through their films — or name them as a bridge.

Browse all chains

The Discs That Changed How Britain Watched

When DVD landed in Britain in 1997 it promised cinema in your living room. The discs that followed rewired what collectors expected from a film at home.

10 films

Game On: Cinematic Journeys Through Digital Worlds

From arcade nostalgia to virtual reality epics, these films explore the thrill and terror of living inside the game.

8 films

Riding the Circuit

From theme park gunslingers to bounty hunters on Mars, a journey through the sci-fi Western and the cultures that remade it.

8 films

Wild Hearts: Feral Children and the Call of the Wild

From the forests of 18th-century France to the animated jungles of Mowgli, a journey through cinema's feral children and their quest for belonging.

7 films

The Weight of the Cape: Inheriting a Legacy You Never Asked For

Before the multiverse had a use for her, Kara Zor-El's first outing wasn't framed as destiny, it was framed as a mistake to fix. She loses the Omegahedron, the...

8 films

The DVDs That Changed Everything

In the autumn of 1997, the first DVD players reached British shops, and the format arrived with a sales pitch that sounded too good to be true: cinema in your l...

13 films

Topics