Pastorelli was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the son of Dotty, an artist, and Ledo Pastorelli, an insurance salesman. Pastorelli was of Albanian^{[citation needed]} descent from Italy. His sister, Gwen Pastorelli, is an opera singer and a real estate agent. He was a 1972 graduate of Edison High School in Edison, New Jersey. He initially planned to start a career as a boxer, but had to give up the sport after suffering a near-fatal car accident. Pastorelli later claimed that he had a "near death" experience at this time: he professed that he saw himself hovering over his body in a hospital bed and saw his father overcome with grief.

Career

Pastorelli was an admitted drug addict before he achieved sobriety. Once sober, he pursued theater work in New York City in such 1970s productions as Rebel Without a Cause, The Rainmaker, and Death of a Salesman. In 1982, he headed to Los Angeles and turned to film and TV, soon finding a niche playing streetwise characters. After supporting Bette Midler and Shelley Long in Outrageous Fortune and Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop II, his first substantial film role came with Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves. However, it was on TV that he would hit his stride as Candice Bergen's gruff but lovable house painter Eldin Bernecky on Murphy Brown, staying with the show for seven seasons. Murphy Brown producer Diane English gave Pastorelli his own starring vehicle, the sitcom Double Rush, which lasted one season in 1995. Two years later, Pastorelli headlined the American adaptation of the British detective series Cracker.

With his TV career came more visible roles in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, Striking Distance, Michael and Modern Vampires. He played the role of salty Luther Billis in the mini-movie remake of South Pacific with Glenn Close, then appeared alongside Close on stage in A Streetcar Named Desire a year later. His final, posthumous, screen appearance was in Be Cool as Joe Loop in 2005.