Tony Danza

Tony Danza is an American actor best known for starring on the TV series Taxi and Who’s the Boss?, for which Danza was nominated for an Emmy Award and four Golden Globe Awards. In 1998, Danza won the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Male Performer in a New Television Series for his role on the sitcom The Tony Danza Show.

Danza was born Anthony Salvatore Iadanza in Brooklyn, New York, to parents Anne Cammisa and Matty Iadanza. Anne was born in Campobello di Mazara Sicily and immigrated to the United States with five brothers and sisters in 1929. Danza has one younger brother, Matty Jr., who owns a restaurant in Los Angeles called Matty’s on Melrose. When Danza was 14, he and his family relocated to the Long Island community of Malverne, and Danza attended Malverne High School, graduating in 1969. Danza earned a bachelor’s degree in history education in 1973 from the University of Dubuque, which he attended on a wrestling scholarship. It was during his first year of college that he got the Robert Crumb Keep on Truckin’ tattoo on his upper right arm. In a 1985 interview in Us Weekly magazine, Danza remarked, “I was playing pool with a guy who had all these tattoos, and I wanted to be friends.” Danza now also sports a “Keep Punching”/boxing gloves tattoo on his right shoulder. Also while in college, Danza met and married his first wife, Rhonda Iadanza, with whom he had two children.

From 1976 to 1979, Danza was a professional boxer with a 9-3 record, with all of his fights, wins and losses, ending by knockout.

Shortly after his college graduation, Danza was discovered by a producer at a boxing gymnasium in New York. He then earned a spot on the television show Taxi.