Tom DiMenna

After a brief stint as a professional football player in the Italian-American Football League, Tom DiMenna has since devoted himself to being a comedic actor and writer. The former Penn Quarterback-turned-comedian was forged in the Italian city of Bologna, where he played for a distinctly Italian pro-football team called the Bologna Warriors; a team that literally served tea, cookies, and cigarettes at half time. He has written a screenplay about his experience entitled The Bologna Warrior.

After Italy, DiMenna studied improvisation at Second City in Chicago. He later moved to NYC and performed in various improv shows at the P.I.T., Magnet, and U.C.B theaters, before joining the indie improv team, Smirk. While in New York, he found a few gigs doing character voices for The Onion, enrolled in the Scott Freeman Acting Studio, and created a series of critically-acclaimed music videos (SXSW, Edinburgh). The Godfather Musical, directed by Zeke and Simon Hawkins (AFI/Tisch), is a musical satire on the iconic death scenes in the Godfather trilogy. Each chapter of the trilogy features DiMenna inhabiting such unlikely characters as Fredo Corleone, Moe Greene, and Luca Brasi.

DiMenna then went to London where he studied Shakespeare at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. And soon after, re-located to Los Angeles. He has since been performing his surreal, traveling lounge act Who Loves You, Baby?, a comedy show featuring the ghost of 70's icon, Telly Savalas. The show is an homage to the fiercely heterosexual men that dominated the culture way back when, with DiMenna giving an overtly-dramatic, pitch-perfect, re-enactment of Savalas' minor singing career in the 1970's. The show is written by fellow Smirk member, Hunter Nelson, and directed by veteran actor/comedian, Taylor Negron; who has been working with DiMenna since the two met at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He was also underway on a web-series for Funnyordie.com called The Purists. Teaming up with Bob Turton (F.O.D., Actor's Gang), the series is about two legendary old-time football coaches determined to restore honor and glory to the game they love.

Tribeca Film