Joe Mantegna on Veterans

Video & Photo credit: Janet Donovan

In honor of Veterans Day here is an interview from 11 years ago with actor Joe Mantegna on what veterans mean to him.

“I had somewhat of a Catholic education as a child,” Mantegna reminisced with Hollywood on the Potomac, “though not a complete one because my parents couldn’t afford to put me through Catholic school for very long. It was for just a couple years, but it was enough time to have a few knuckles cracked by a few nuns, and chased by a few brothers.”

He then explained how he, like many young people, began to question his faith until it came into focus in the year 2000. “I happened to be making a movie in France and I was driving through this small town outside Paris, about an hour outside Paris where we were shooting the film, and I saw this beautiful cemetery. The French flag was flying and right next to it was the flag of the United States of America. I said to my driver, ‘What is that? Why is there an American flag and this French flag flying together?’ He says that’s a military cemetery where many of your countrymen died defending this city.

The image I took away was these hundreds and hundreds of crosses, these white crosses, and I thought to myself, these men died so I could live in this country that we take for granted,” he added. “When I got back from Paris I stopped at a store and I bought this cross. I bought this cross because of them, because of the countless others, and countless other crosses that I saw years later at Arlington and military cemeteries around the United States and other countries.” To this day, Mantegna still wears the cross.

Watch video here.