Drea De Matteo, most famously known for her role on the hit show “The Sopranos” was born on Jan 19th 1972 in Queens, New York. She is also well known for her roles on ABC TV’s “Maria Housewife” and NBC’s “Joey”.
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Drea De Matteo Net Worth
De Matteo’s has an estimated net worth of $ 15 million. She has earned this wealth over the years through her acting career where she has started in more than 40 TV episodes/movies starting in the mid 1990s. Find out more about her journey below.
Drea De Matteo Early life
Drea grew up a traditional roman catholic home where her mother was already exposed to show business with her being a playwright. Her father was the CEO of a furniture company called Avery Boardman which is still in operation today and has 3 stores across the country. In her early childhood, as her family prospered, they moved to Manhattan’s more affluent Upper East Side neighbourhood and started to mix with upper middle class families. Drea, who has always been down to earth did not adjust very well and cut school often to get away from the stress. She found warmth and comfort from her grandmother whom she would visit often back in Queens, New York.
As a child, Drea recalls going to a play of Cats where she was brought on stage through audience participation and felt petrified and thrilled to be there. Since then she found her calling and passion of acting. Drea graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts which has some famous alumni including Lada Gaga, Whoopi Goldberg, Spike Lee, and many others. Original Drea’s aspirations was to be a director as she felt too embarrassed or self-indulgent to pursue acting. Drea was somewhat of an introvert as a child and felt that directing was a way to “hide” behind the camera. Drea did not initially take her classes seriously and was kicked out for a period but after begging to return, the faculty agreed if she maintained a high grade average. Eventually, she was spotted to have talents in acting and ended up settling there and has been successful in that path as evidence from her career highlights. She also studied at HB Studio where her mother did some work HB Studio also has some famous celebrities that also studied there including Robert De Niro, Jessica Lange, Harvey Keitel.
Career
In 1996, Drea’s landed one of her first main role was in the film called “M” word which was a comedy romantic drama where she had a minor role. Around the same time, she also was involved in the TV serial “Swift” in 1996 which was a action crime thriller but was only aired for one season.
Soon afterwards, De Matteo landed a role in the acclaimed HBO TV series The Soprano playing the character of Adriana La Cerva who was the girlfriend of Christopher Moltisanti, played by co-star Michael Imperioli. This is the role that brought her stardom and a huge fan following. Drea in fact won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2004 for her role. In the series, Drea’s character Adriana was a dream girl who knew the way of the mob but also knew how to support her mob fiancé. However, her character was killed in the end as she was discovered to be an FBI informant. Her character’s death was mourned by many fans and was also quite upsetting for all the co-stars as well. The death of De Matteo’s character sent shock waves to audiences and changed the relationship of the show for many viewers as the moments of comedy and light heartedness was over shadowed by this cold act. Out of respect for the character, the director, David Chase, decided not to show the actual bullet to the head
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De Matteo then later starred in 25 films including the Hugh Jackman and John Travolta movie Swordfish (2001), Deuces Wild (2002), The Perfect You (2002), and many others.
Around the time that Sopranos was ending, and also Friends was ending, arguably the two most popular shows on TV in the early 2000s, the Friends spin-off Joey was aired with De Matteo playing the hairdresser sister (Gina) of Matt LeBlanc’s Joey Tribbiani character. The show aired between 2004-2006 for two seasons. In the show, Joey moves to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career and moves in with his genius nephew where the complementary personalities provide entertaining moments. There was a lot of pressure for both Italian actors to perform as this was a high profile spin-off, but then the ratings were not as high as hoped.
In 2016-2018, she played Tess Nazario within the TV series “Shades of Blue” which was another police drama which lasted for a total of 3 seasons.
Family
In the late 90s and early 2000s De Matteo was dating Mike Sportes. They couple decided to launch a 1970s rock and roll inspired vintage clothing storing in Los Angeles called Filth Mart where Sportes is the creative and assembles most of the casual ware.
De Matteo has two children (a boy Waylon who was born in 2011 and a girl Alabama who was born in 2007) with her then husband, Shooter Jennings. Shooter Jennings, who’s real name is Waylon Albright Jennings is a southern rock singer and song writer who has had some appearances in a few films. De Matteo and Jennings started dating in 2003 but ended their relationship around the time of their son’s birth and Jennings married Misty Brooke Swain in 2013.
De Matteo is most recently dating Michael Devin who is from the music band Whitesnake which is a UK hard rock band that originally formed in 1978. Devin joined Whitesnake as a guitarist in 2010.
Other facts about De Matteo
De Matteo is as serious smoker since the age of 12. She quit smoking originally when she was pregnant with her son, but then picked it up again in the early 2010s. It is not something that she’s proud of at all and De Matteo has been struggling with the addiction for decades. There was also a period where she was attempting vaping as an alternative and also became a supporter of the Cue vaping product.
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