As Seen In New York Post

The saddest thing in life is wasted talent – and actor Lillo Brancato is spreading that “Bronx Tale” maxim, one addict at a time.

Brancato portrayed Robert De Niro’s son, Calogero, in the coming-of-age classic, then won a role as a minor mobster in “The Sopranos.”

But in 2005, Brancato’s life infamously spun out of control: hopelessly addicted to crack and heroin, he burgled a friend’s house with an accomplice when a hero off-duty cop who confronted them was shot dead.

The actor was acquitted of murder but served eight years for the botched heist.

Now he has found a third act: inspiring others to stay clean and steer clear of crime, through both an Instagram account with 95,000 followers, and working at an addiction treatment facility in New Jersey.

And he tells The Post, it is the words of De Niro’s “A Bronx Tale” character, Lornezo Anello, that are now his mantra for others: “You can be anything you want to be.”

De Niro told The Post through his rep: “It’s good to hear that Lillo has turned his life around, and is using his experience to help others.”

At Brancato’s nadir, he snorted up to 20 bags of crack cocaine and heroin a day, he told The Post, often going to extremes to find the next high.

On Dec. 10, 2005, Brancato and accomplice Steven Armento busted into a friend’s home in the Bronx during a desperate search for drugs. Daniel Enchautegui, an NYPD officer who lived next door, confronted the pair, prompting Armento to open fire, killing the 28-year-old off-duty cop.

Brancato, who testified during the month-long trial, was convicted of attempted burglary but jurors found him not guilty of Enchautegui’s slaying. He got 10 years in prison, ultimately serving eight years before being released in 2013 from the Hudson Correctional Facility.

Armento, whose daughter was Brancato’s ex-girlfriend, got life in prison without the possibility of parole for his first-degree murder conviction in Enchautegui’s slaying.

Ahead of the botched burglary, “toward the end” of his ruthless addiction, Brancato said he had spent $14,000 within two weeks on drugs.

“I remember that amount specifically because that is what my mom put in my checking account for rehab, which I only went to for two days, and then I cleaned out the rest of the $14,000,” Brancato told The Post.

it was while banged up in Rikers that Brancato got clean, last doing drugs there in 2006.

Now Brancato, 46, is centering his life on helping others beat addiction too. The Yonkers-based actor has a growing audience on Instagram, where he shares daily inspirational messages to his 94,000-plus followers.

He delivers motivational speeches, and he works helps with classed and works as the director of public relations at More Life Recovery Center in Metuchen, where he stresses the notion of culpability.

“Just the whole accountability concept, for me, is so important,” Brancato told The Post Wednesday as he drove to a therapy session in Metuchen.

“I’m going there now, and we have like 15, 20 kids, and I’m trying to teach them some of the things that I learned along the way.

“I love being sober. I can’t see life any other way. And now I feel it’s my obligation to try to help as many people as possible.”– Lillo Brancato

“You know, just the mere fact that I am doing that, it kind of holds me accountable,” Brancato said of his weekly Metuchen session. “Because it’s like, ‘bro, you’re telling us all this stuff, teaching us all this stuff,’ so now you have a responsibility to actually live this way.”

Brancato said there was a “very symbiotic” relationship he’s cultivated with clients during his three-year tenure at the drug and alcohol addiction treatment facility.

“I’m held accountable by them, that I have to do the right thing and live the right way so they can prosper because they’re looking up to me,” he said. “It’s mutually beneficial and it’s, like, exactly where I need to be.”

The owner of the outpatient facility, Kenneth Sass, met Brancato in 2020 through a mutual friend and instantly knew how effective he could be helping others overcome their demons.

Brancato parlayed that positive first impression into an ongoing “impactful” role at the center, with immediate results, Sass said. “Ever since we tried it, it’s been phenomenal. He’s instrumental in the whole system. “He’s instrumental – period,” Sass said.

“I didn’t know that I was going to be that much of an inspiration,” Brancato said of his impact at the addiction treatment center. “But I could see right away I had an audience, just because I guess I had that credibility being that I was away.”

Brancato said he is inspired by what De Niro’s character – a proud city bus driver trying to keep his son from turning to crime – told his.

“You can be anything you want to be,” Lorenzo Anello tells Calogero when he asks if he can become a baseball player. “Remember, the saddest thing in life is wasted talent. You can have all the talent in the world, but if you don’t do the right thing, then nothing happens. But when you do right, guess what? Good things happen, ya hear me?”

That exchange, just 30 seconds in a two-hour movie, still “means so much,” Brancato said.

“I realize I have less time in this world, and it becomes much more crucial not to waste your talent,” he said.

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Brancato made his big-screen return in 2016’s “Back in the Day,” a drama about a young boxer and a mob boss. Enchautegui’s family and the city’s police union blasted the actor’s shot at redemption.

But director Paul Borghese told The Post in early 2015: “Everybody deserves a second chance. He’s in a much better place. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong person.”

Brancato also starred in 2021’s “Made in Mexico” and “Sleepyhead,” a thriller set in hell featuring a cameo by actress Taral Hicks – who played Calogero’s girlfriend in “A Bronx Tale” nearly 30 years earlier. The indie film ran at a few film festivals last year, but is now getting reworked, Brancato said.

“It’s really awesome, dude,” Brancato gushed of the latter project, featuring himself as a dead utility worker. “It’s so unique and so well done.”

And Brancato is also writing a screenplay called “Never Meet Your Heroes,” a drama centered on addiction. Hicks has agreed to costar as his wife, he said.

In the upcoming film, he’ll play a degenerate gambler named Joe Preston who loses his job and wife due to his addiction fueled by trauma – the “real gateway” for drug and alcohol abuse, Brancato said.

“I was Calogero in the Bronx Tale, but then I when I got in trouble, it’s like, this is Lillo, this is somebody just like us,” he said. “So, when I saw that, I was, like, ‘Wow, this is such a special gift.’ To be able to inspire people is such a beautiful thing.”