He moonlighted as an actor in Chicago-based films (like Code of Silence, a 1985 Chuck Norris film) and theater before Mann chose him for his Crime Story series, which aired on NBC from 1986 to 1988.
Farina worked with Mann again, as mobster Albert Lombard in several episodes of Miami Vice. īefore becoming an actor, Farina served three years in the United States Army during the Vietnam Era, followed by 18 years in the Chicago Police Department (1967 to 1985), during which he advanced from patrolman to detective.įarina began working for director Michael Mann as a police consultant, which led Mann to cast him in a small role in the 1981 film Thief. The Farinas raised their children in a North Avenue home in Old Town, a working-class neighborhood with a broad ethnic mixture, with Italians and Germans being the two predominant ethnicities. Farina's father, who was from Villalba, Sicily, was a Chicago-area doctor, and his mother a homemaker. Farina was born on a Leap Day (February 29, 1944) in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood, the fourth son and youngest of the seven children of Joseph and Yolanda Farina.
