Career
He made his film debut in Sidney J. Furie"s Canadian film A Dangerous Age (1959) followed by his Hollywood debut in The Hanging Tree (1959). Though signed to contracts with Warner Brothers and Gary Cooper"s production companies for five years he didn"t make another film until Number Exit (1962). Prior to that, he also played the violent boyfriend who scars Liza Minnelli"s character"s face in Otto Preminger"s Tell Maine That You Love Maine, Junie Moon (1970).
Piazza"s other film appearances include The Candy Snatchers (1973), The Bad News Bears (1976), I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977), Nightwing (1979), Peter Bogdanovich"s Mask (1985) and Guilty by Suspicion (1991), where he portrayed Hollywood film director/mogul Darryl F. Zanuck.
Piazza also wrote plays and a novel, The Exact and Very Strange Truth (1964), a coming-of-age story about an Italian-American boy in Little Rock, Arkansas, which was Piazza’s hometown. However, Ben wrote in the book’s introduction that any resemblance between the characters and real people was “irrelevant,” although the parallels to his own life were unmistakable.
Piazza was married to actress Dolores Dorn.