• His favourite food is Italian beef
• Mantegna made his acting debut in the 1969 production of Hair.
• Formerly an actor with an Chicago's Organic Theatre Company.
• In 1978, he debuted on Broadway in Working; he also helped write "Bleacher Bums", an award-winning play. The Los Angeles production of "Bums" ran over five years.
• His daughter, Mia, is autistic
• He was a classmate of Walt Parazaider. His favorite band is Chicago.
• Received the lifetime acheivment award at the Los Angeles Italian Film Festival April 26, 2004.
• Will Girardi, Mantegna's character on "Joan of Arcadia" (2003), was ranked #40 in TV Guide's list of the "50 Greatest TV Dads of All Time" [20 June 2004 issue].
• As of May 15, 2005 has appeared on "The Simpsons" a record 16 times.
• Father of Gina Mantegna.
• His Simpsons character, Fat Tony, has been the subject of two inside jokes. One of Fat Tony's first appearances was in the episode where Bart becomes his errand boy. At the end of the episode, the events are turned into a TV movie, in which, we are told, Joe Mantegna is playing Fat Tony. On a much later episode, after a mafia stand-off is placated by the appearance of Maggie Simpson, everyone breaks down crying. Fat Tony remarks, "I haven't cried like this since I paid to see Godfather III."
• Mantegna won Broadway's 1984 Tony Award as Best Actor (Featured Role - Play) for playing Richard ("Ricky") Roma in 'David Mamet 's "Glengarry Glen Ross." In 2005, Liev Schreiber won his own Tony for playing the part originated by Mantegna in a revival of the play. The third major actor to play the part of Ricky Roma (in the cinematic interpretation of the play) was Al Pacino.
• Along with Elizabeth Taylor and Mark Hamill, he is one of only three actors to play both themselves and a fictional character in "The Simpsons" (1989). He played himself in the Season Three episode "Bart the Murderer" and portrayed Fat Tony in that and fourteen other episodes of the series.

Joe Mantegna earned a Tony Award for his performance as Richard Roma in David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Glengarry Glen Ross. His additional Broadway credits include the role of Bobby Gould in Mamet's Speed-the-Plow and a role in the musical Working, in which he made his Broadway debut. In his hometown of Chicago, Mantegna also starred in the Mamet plays A Life in the Theatre and The Disappearance of the Jews, both at the Goodman Theatre. He directed Mamet's Lakeboat in Los Angeles and later made his feature film directorial debut with Lakeboat, based on Mamet's screenplay. Mantegna also conceived and co-authored the Off Broadway play Bleacher Bums, which was subsequently produced for television and earned him an Emmy Award.

Mantegna made his feature film debut in Compromising Positions and has since starred in the David Mamet films House of Games, Things Change and Homicide, in roles that Mamet specifically created for him, as well as in Alice, Celebrity, The Godfather III, Bugsy, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Liberty Heights, Forget Paris, Suspect, Up Close and Personal, The Money Pit, Weeds, Baby's Day Out, Airheads, Queens Logic, Wait Until Spring, Bandini, Uncle Nino and An Eye for an Eye. He also has starring roles in the upcoming films The Kid & I, Nine Lives and Lagoon.

His television credits include the cable films The Rat Pack, for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award for his portrayal of Dean Martin, State of Emergency, A Call to Remember, My Little Assassin, The Water Engine, Boy Meets Girl, Jerry and Tom and a series of films based on Robert Parker's Spenser novels, including Small Vices, Thin Air and Walking Shadow. He earned an Emmy Award nomination for his role in the mini-series The Last Don, based on Mario Puzo's best-selling novel, and starred in its sequel, The Last Don II, both on CBS. He starred in the CBS series First Monday, and will star in the upcoming CBS movie Say When. His voice can be heard in his recurring role as Fat Tony in The Simpsons, and he starred as the voice of the boatman in the animated feature The Trumpet of the Swan.

Mantegna was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago and lives in Los Angeles. His birth date is November 13.