Larger-than-life comedian Mario Cantone built an accomplished stage career during the 1990s and 2000s, starring in such groundbreaking off-Broadway works as “Love! Valor! Compassion!”, “The Crumple Zone” and “June Moon.” His day job, however, remained stand-up comedy. A favorite guest of such shows as “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” (NBC, 1993- ), “Comedy Central’s Premium Blend” (1997- ), and the “HBO Comedy Showcase” (1995-97), Cantone earned critical acclaim in 2002 for his one-man show, “An Evening with Mario Cantone.” To mainstream audiences, however, Cantone would be best known for his role as Anthony Marentino, the flamboyant event planner, on the hit comedy, “Sex and the City” (HBO, 1998-2004).
Born Dec. 9, 1959 in Boston, MA, Cantone attended Stoneham High School where he discovered theatre. A star drama student, he enrolled at Emerson College in 1978 after graduating high school. There, he continued his stage work and began flirting with the idea of stand-up comedy. Turning to acting professionally in 1983, Cantone began performing stand-up in New York and got his big break through VH-l's “Stand-Up Spotlight” showcase (1988-1991) hosted by Rosie O’Donnell. This eventually led to Cantone being hired by O’Donnell as her opening act during the late 1980s.
Famed for his dead-on celebrity impressions and raunchy blue humor, Cantone would, ironically enough, get his start in television as the host of “Steampipe Alley” (Synd., 1988-1993) – sort of a “Saturday Night Live” (NBC, 1975- ) for kids that featured G-rated comedy routines and a cartoon showcase. Despite having to tone down his act for the young ones at home, Cantone found ways to inject his own rat-a-tat-tat personality into the proceedings. Notorious for his spontaneous rapid-fire riffs and pop culture references, Cantone often appeared to be performing as much for grown-ups as he did for kids. Like the great Pee-wee Herman, Cantone’s gags would often cross a strange, but tenuous line between taste and maturity. For example, one of the more outrageous “games” Cantone would lead his young charges in on “Steampipe Alley” was “Find My Eye” – a scavenger hunt style adventure where kids would try to find an ersatz Sammy Davis, Jr.’s glass eye (played of course by Cantone). Other times, he would conduct a full-dress cocktail party as Truman Capote for an audience far too young to even know who Capote was. Even so, the kids still found him hysterical.
Cantone’s film and television career built slowly as he grew in stature in the New York theater and comedy world. His earliest credits were small roles in Robert Redford’s “Quiz Show” (1994) and Gore Verbinski’s slapstick comedy “Mousehunt” (1997), with a larger and somewhat prophetic role as an over-the-top event planner in a 2001 episode of “Ed” (NBC, 2000-04). That same year, Cantone made his first appearance as Anthony on “Sex and the City,” a role which became recurring until the series’ finale. As the pernickety Anthony, Cantone was well matched with co-star Kristen Davis’s uptight character, Charlotte, often offering her unsolicited bedroom advice and gossip. Cantone’s performance, combined with the growing buzz over his New York stage, gave his on-screen career a boost, and he became a frequent guest on talk shows, such as “The Rosie O’Donnell Show,” (NBC, 1996-2002) and game shows like “Pyramid,” (Syndicated, 2002-04) and “Hollywood Squares” (Syndicated, 1998-2004). Cantone also had a memorable bit on his friend Dave Chappelle’s eponymous 2003 Comedy Central variety show, “Ask a Gay Dude.”
In 2005, Cantone returned to Broadway with his second one-man show, “Laugh Whore.” The production, which featured his explosive takes on his Italian-American childhood; spot-on imitations of Jim Morrison, Liza Minnelli and others; as well as his own original co-compositions, was recorded for broadcast on Showtime that same year. Cantone also contributed to the all-star comedian line-up in Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza’s uproarious documentary, “The Aristocrats” that same year, and had a supporting role in the little-seen comedy “Searching for Bobby D” as a casting director. In 2007, Cantone lent his distinct fast-talking voice to the CGI-animated mockumentary, “Surf’s Up” about champion penguin surfers.