William DeMeo
William DeMeo has extensive experience not only as a producer and writer, but also as an accomplished actor and director. William DeMeo grew up in the Gravesend, Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. The block he grew up on is West St. which he uses as the name of his film company, West Street Productions. William's first movie was A Bronx Tale (1993), where he was only supposed to be an extra but wound up with a couple of lines.
His first producing accomplishment was the independent feature film One Deadly Road (1998) which he wrote, produced and played a leading role in. The film was distributed overseas, aired on pay-per-view television and was distributed nationally on Home Video.
William went on to write, produce, co-direct and play a leading role in the feature film Wannabes (2000). The film was picked up by Artisan Entertainment and was released in theaters before its national Home Video/DVD release in 2002 including Blockbuster. William won the Best Actor Award for his performance in Wannabes (2000) at the New York Independent International Film Festival. The film also won the Best Director and Best Supporting Actor Awards at that festival. It was shot on 35mm film, as was William's next film, Searching for Bobby D (2005) which he produced, co-wrote the screenplay with his director Paul Borghese, and he starred in it with Carmen Electra, Sandra Bernhard, Mario Cantone, Tyson Beckford, Tony Darrow and the rest of the ensemble cast. This comedic adventure and independent film went on to win numerous Audience Favorite and Best Comedy Feature Awards at film festivals internationally and was picked up for DVD distribution by Monarch Entertainment after many theatrical screenings, one to a sold-out crowd of over 600 audience members.
In addition to the roles William has played in films he has produced he has also appeared in numerous other feature films as well as on national television shows and in mini-series. He portrayed a young Carlo Gambino in Boss of Bosses (2001) and the character Al Pacino in Analyze That (2002). He was featured in Hackers (1995), played a role in the award-winning short, I Am Woody (2003), and appeared numerous times in the last three seasons of The Sopranos (1999) as one of Paulie Walnuts' crew members, Jason Molinaro. DeMeo has guest starred in Blue Bloods and Person Of Interest. He played the lead roles in Once Upon A Time in Brooklyn and Back In The Day. Both movies had a well known cast with names like Alec Baldwin, Danny Glover and Armand Assante to name a few. He has lead roles with John Travolta in the Gotti Movie playing Sammy The Bull. Also played the role of Ritchie Stechal in First Kill alongside of Bruce Willis and Hayden Christensen. DeMeo has developed, written and directed four episodes of the new series called Gravesend. Where he plays the lead role Benny Zerltta. The episodes are due to be out in the first quarter of 2020.