Joe Pantoliano, who played Ralph Cifaretto in 21 episodes of The Sopranos, spoke candidly about his mental health and daily routines during a conversation at the Tribeca Film Festival this month.
The Emmy award-winning actor shared his thoughts while attending a 30-year anniversary event for the film Bound. He told Page Six that he relies on a combination of practices to protect both his mental and physical health.
"You need three things — masturbation, medication and meditation," Pantoliano confessed.
He then clarified that his personal routine does not follow that formula exactly. He said he does not meditate, but does take a supplement he described as wonderful.
One habit Pantoliano said he has maintained is a daily walk, based on advice he received from doctors at McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility.
"When I went to McLean Hospital, the brain hospital, they told me that a brisk 15-minute walk is equivalent to like 90 milligrams of Prozac, so I walk every day," he told the outlet.
Pantoliano also discussed his history with addiction, describing a pattern of chasing feelings that numbed what he called a persistent emotional discomfort. He said success was once a vice, followed by sex and then alcohol.
"Finding things that make this feeling go away," he said. "I thought if I could become successful, then this feeling that was in the pit of my soul would go away."
He said the turning point came when he crashed and burned but did not die, and that he came to understand his struggles differently as a result.
"I guess discovered my shortcomings; they weren't terrible defects, they were, you know, just mental illness," he said.
In a 2020 interview with Page Six, Pantoliano had described a similar pattern.
"You find something that fills the void — masturbation, meditation — it doesn't matter. You have a drink and you go, 'Ah, this is the feeling I've been looking for.' You're trying to fill it," he said at the time.
His own experiences with depression led Pantoliano to found the mental health awareness charity No Kidding, Me Too! He has spoken publicly about mental health on multiple occasions and previously told Page Six that he admired Prince Harry for being a vocal advocate on the subject.
"If you think about William and Harry and what they went through," he said, "the trauma of what happened to them, in a culture that's saying 'stiff upper lip' — it doesn't work that way."
