He took a six year hiatus from acting between 1999 and 2005 before returning for a cameo in The Good Shepherd (2006). in 1990, Pesci won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the psychopathic mobster Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas, ten years after receiving a nomination in the same category for Raging Bull. After the film Pesci returned to run his restaurant in The Bronx, Pesci then got a phone call from Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro who were impressed with his performance in the film and asked him to co-star in a 1980 film with Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. in 1988, Pesci co-starred with pop singer Michael Jackson in the musical-fantasy film Moonwalker as the film’s antagonist, Frankie “Mr. Big” LiDeo (an anagram for one of the film’s producers and longtime Jackson manager Frank DiLeo). in the film, Pesci was featured in the fifth and final segment, a short movie called Smooth Criminal, which was based on Michael Jackson’s song of the same name.
