Born and raised in New Jersey to working-class Italian American parents, Joe Pesci had been a barber, a singing waiter on Arthur Ave. in the Bronx, and a stage comedian before he found his way into the movies, starring with comedy partner Frank Vincent in the 1976 low-budget crime thriller The Death Collector, which caught the eye of a up-and-coming director named Martin Scorsese. What Scorsese saw in Pesci, presumably, are the qualities that have riveted audiences since then any time that he’s on-screen: a stand-up’s sense of comic timing combined with a total natural’s absence of actorly affect, which among other things has allowed Pesci to play some genuinely frightening short-stack heavies. (Standing under 5 ½ feet tall, he’s a throwback to bantam bruisers like Edward G. Robinson and Jimmy Cagney.) Is he a clown? Does he amuse you? All that, and a helluva lot else.