Is your favorite Italian American actor really of Italian decent, or just a convincing actor? Peter Falk, the dearly missed actor who played TV’s cunning inspector Colombo, used to do such an excellent job at imitating the Italian American sleuth that most TV viewers believe he was of Italian descent. In reality, Falk was Russian and Polish, with a mix of Hungarian and Czech further back in his ancestry. So, contrary to Falk’s public image, he was not Italian American, but a mixture of very hardy Eastern European stock.

On the other hand, there are actors, who are of actual Italian heritage but, because of a changed name and the roles they choose to play, are rarely linked to their Italian ancestry. For example, actor Allen Alda, ‘Hawkeye’ of TV’s M.A.S.H. fame, was born Alfonso D’Abruzzo. When the actor’s father, Robert Alda, entered show business he changed his Italian surname to better assimilate into American culture.