Bleed For This: Meet the Cast of the Vinny Paz Biopioc

Kevin Aherne

Love him or hate him, Vinny Pazienza is a Rhode Island icon. He soon will also draw national attention, as World Champion boxer Vinny Paz's biographical film: Bleed For This is due to hit the silver screen in Summer 2015.  With the popularity and acclaim of recent boxing and fighting films--such as The Hurricane (1999), Million Dollar Baby (2004), and The Fighter (2010)--this new film has drawn quite a formidable list of Hollywood stars to its cast and crew. 

The film, written by Pippa Bianco and Ben Younger, tells the inspirational true story of World Champion Boxer Vinny Pazienza. Who, after a near fatal car crash which left him not knowing if he'd ever walk again, made one of sports most incredible comebacks.

With the first scenes filming this week in Rhode Island, let's take a look at some of the stars that you may see in and around the Ocean State in the coming days and weeks. 

Martin Scorcese

Bleed For This Role
Executive Producer

Best Known For (As Director)
Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The Departed, Wolf of Wall Street

Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942, in New York City, to Italian-American parents Catherine (Cappa) and Charles Scorsese. He was raised in the neighborhood of Little Italy, which later provided the inspiration for several of his films. Scorsese earned a B.S. degree in film communications in 1964, followed by an M.A. in the same field in 1966 at New York University's School of Film.  During this time, he made numerous prize-winning short films including The Big Shave (1968), and directed his first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door? (1967).

---

Miles Teller

Bleed For This Role
Vinny Pazienza

Best Known For
Footloose, Project X, Divergent, 21 & Over

Miles Teller was born on February 20, 1987 in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, USA. He is an actor, known for The Spectacular Now (2013), Divergent (2014) and 21 & Over (2013). He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. In January 2014, Teller was cast to portray Dan Aykroyd in Steve Conrad's untitled John Belushi biopic. In February 2014, he was reportedly cast in a new film version of the Fantastic Four as Mister Fantastic.

---

Katey Segal 

Bleed For This Role
Louise Pazienza (Vinny Paz's Mother)

Best Known For
Married With Children, Futurama, Sons of Anarchy

Katey Sagal became a household name in the late 1980s as the fabulously brazen, undomesticated Peg Bundy on the enduring Fox series Married with Children (1987). During its lengthy run, she received three Golden Globe and two American Comedy Award nominations. Katey moved on without after the show went off the air, not only starring in other sitcoms and television movies, but portraying characters that were polar opposite to the outrageous role as Peg Bundy. In 2008, she took on the role of Gemma Teller Morrow -- the matriarch of a Hell's Angels-esque California biker gang -- on the series Sons of Anarchy (2008), which earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama in 2011.

---

Aaron Eckhart

Bleed For This Role
Kevin Rooney (Vinny Paz's Trainer)

Best Known For
Erin Brockovich, Thank You For Smoking, The Dark Knight, Battle Los Angeles, Olympus Has Fallen

Born in California, he moved to England at the age of 13, when his father relocated the family. Several years later, he began his acting career by performing in school plays, before moving to Sydney, for his high school senior year. He left high school without graduating, but earned a diploma through an adult education course, and graduated from Brigham Young University in 1994 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in film. For much of the mid-1990s, he lived in New York City as a struggling, unemployed actor.  Eckhart made a debut as an unctuous, sociopathic ladies' man in LaBute's black comedy film, In the Company of Men (1997).

---

Ted Levine

Bleed For This Role
Lou Duva (Vinny Paz's Manager)

Best Known For
Silence of the Lambs, Heat, The Fast and the Furious, The Hills Have Eyes, American Gangster, Monk


Born in Bellaire, Ohio, in May, 1957, he was among the last graduating class of the Windsor Mountain School in Lenox, MA. After his breakout role in The Silence of the Lambs (as primary antagonist Buffalo Bill), there was a period where he was typecast in villainous roles. Levine was able to remedy this by playing more positive characters, such as a member of Al Pacino's police unit in Heat, astronaut Alan Shepard in the HBO mini-series From the Earth to the Moon, and Paul Walker's police superior Sergeant Tanner in The Fast and the Furious.

---

Ciarán Hinds

Bleed For This Role
Angelo Pazienza (Vinny Paz's Father)

Best Known For
Munich, Miami Vice, There Will Be Blood, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Frozen

Ciaran Hinds was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on February 9, 1953. His father was a doctor who hoped to have Ciaran follow in his footsteps, but that was not to be. It was his mother Moya, an amateur actress, who was the real influence behind his decision to become an actor. Hinds' film career began with the movie Excalibur (1981), which boasted a cast rich in talented actors including Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne and Patrick Stewart.

---

Ben Younger

Bleed For This Role
Director

Best Known For
Boiler Room, Prime

Ben Younger was born on October 7, 1972 in Brooklyn, NY. In 1995, he attended an interview for a job in a brokerage firm, and immediately conceived the idea that went on to become his first film, Boiler Room. He spent two years researching the underground telemarketing brokerage industry as background for his screenplay. Boiler Room was released in 2000. A corporate drama in the mold of Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross, with colorful dialogue that some critics compared to David Mamet, the film exposed the shady world of "chop shops" (underground brokerage firms).

---

More WBOB Reads

• WATCH: Daniel Tosh Mocks ESPN For Ripping Off Segment
  
• "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" Celebrates 50th Anniversary - December 9
  
• LISTEN: Top Five IS ALIVE! - RI Comic Con Costumes...
  
• LISTEN:  Eddie McClintock Comic's Corner Bonus NYC Con Coverage