Joe Dallesandro

 Joseph Angelo D'Allesandro III (born December 31, 1948), better known as Joe Dallesandro, is an American actor and Warhol superstar. Although he never became a mainstream film star, 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 art collective of the 1970s.

He was born in Pensacola, Florida and raised in New York. His father, Joseph Angelo D'Allesandro II, was in the U.S. Navy, and his mother was 16-year-old Thelma Testman. By the time

Dallesandro was five, his mother was serving five years in a Federal Penitentiary for interstate auto theft. Dallesandro and his brother, Bobby, were taken to New York with 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. The senior Dallesandro would visit them about once a month at their foster parents' home. Dallesandro was initially happy living with his foster parents, but he began to resent them thinking that they were preventing him from living with his father.

Dallesandro began acting out and became aggressive. He repeatedly ran away from his foster home until his father finally relented and allowed him to live with him. At the age of 14, Dallesandro and his brother moved to Queens to live with their paternal grandparents and their father. At 15, he was expelled from school for punching the principal, who had insulted his father. After his expulsion, Dallesandro began hanging out with gangs and started stealing cars. In one such instance, Dallesandro panicked and smashed the stolen car he was driving

through the gate of the Holland Tunnel. He was stopped by a police roadblock and shot once in the leg by police who mistakenly thought he was armed. Dallesandro managed to escape being caught by police, but was later arrested when his father took him to the hospital for his gunshot wound. He was sentenced to Camp Cass Rehabilitation Center for Boys in the Catskills in 1964.

The following year, Dallesandro ran away from Camp Cass. He supported himself by nude modeling, appearing most notably in short films and magazine photos for Bob Mizer's Athletic Model Guild.

Underground film career

Dallesandro met Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey in 1967 while they were shooting Four Stars, and they cast him in the film on the spot. Warhol would later comment "In my movies, everyone's in love with Joe Dallesandro."

Dallesandro played a hustler in his third Warhol film, Flesh (1968), where he had several nude scenes. Flesh became a crossover hit with mainstream audiences, and Dallesandro became the most popular of the Warhol stars. New York Times film critic Vincent Canby wrote of him: "His physique is so magnificently shaped that men as well as women become disconnected at the sight of him."

As Dallesandro's underground fame began to cross over into the popular culture, he graced the cover of Rolling Stone in April 1971. He was also photographed by some of the top celebrity photographers of the time: Francesco Scavullo, Annie Leibovitz, Richard Avedon.

Dallesandro also appeared in Lonesome Cowboys (1968), Trash (1970), Heat (1972), a sardonic re-imagining of Sunset Boulevard with Sylvia Miles, Andy Warhol's Frankenstein and Andy Warhol's Dracula (both 1974) also directed by Morrissey. These last two films were shot in Europe. After filming was complete, Dallesandro chose not to return to the U.S.

Mainstream career

He continued to star in films made mainly in France and Italy for the rest of the decade, returning to America in the 1980s. He made several mainstream films during the 1980s and 1990s. One of his first notable roles was that of 1920s gangster Lucky Luciano in Francis Coppola's The Cotton Club. Working with manager/attorney Stann Findelle, his career enjoyed a resurgence. He had roles in Critical Condition (1987) opposite Richard Pryor, Sunset (1988) with Bruce Willis and James Garner, Guncrazy (1992) with Drew Barrymore, Cry-Baby (1990), and Steven Soderbergh's 1999 film The Limey.

In addition to films, Dallesandro has also worked in television. In 1986, he co-starred in the ABC drama series Fortune Dane. The series lasted only five episodes. Dallesandro has also made guest appearances on Wiseguy, Miami Vice, and Matlock.

Dallesandro is bisexual, has married three times, and has two children. He first married in 1967, to Leslie, the daughter of his father's girlfriend, and their son, Michael, was born circa 1968, but they divorced in 1969. His second marriage was to Terry (Theresa), in 1970, and their son, Joseph A. Dallesandro, Jr., was born November 14, 1970. The couple divorced in early 1978. He has a grandson and a granddaughter by Michael and a grandson by Joseph. In 1987, he married a third time, to Kimberly and divorced and remarried again in 2011.

Dallesandro is semi-retired from acting, and currently manages an apartment building in Los Angeles.