My Mom Was A Nun. My Dad Was In The Mob

When the director of Hidden Figures says he had a crazy family, he’s not kidding.

- Theodore Melfi, as told to Stephen Galloway

Theodore Melfileaped onto Hollywood’s A-list with the triumph of Hidden Figures, the story of three African-American women who each played a key role in NASA’s space program (a film he chose to helm over Spider-Man: Homecoming), which has topped $119 million at the domestic box office. This success is the least surprising thing about the 46-year-old writer-director who, as he celebrates his film’s nomination for best picture (and his own for adapted screenplay), reveals to THR his stranger-than-fiction back story: He grew up with a mobster father and a mother who was a former nun who became his father’s fifth wife. After his dad, Joseph, turned his back on the Mafia, the family lost their 26-room home in Schenectady, N.Y., and moved to a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, where Melfisenior lurched from affection to violence, from the principled to the peculiar. This was normal life as far as his three sons were concerned, just as it was normal for their dad to mix the fearsome with the philosophical.  When young Ted pocketed a candy bar in a local store, he recalls, “We were stopped at the cash register, and the Chunky bar was sticking out of my pocket. The manager said, ‘Your son shoplifted that.’ My dad looked at it and looked at me, and he goes, ‘I know.’ Then he told me, ‘Open the Chunky bar.’ And I was crying, and I opened the Chunky bar, and he goes, ‘Eat it!’ And everyone was gathered around, so now it’s a scene. He’s screaming. And I eat the Chunky bar, crying, with chocolate streaming down my face. And he says, ‘If you’re going to do something, you better be good at it, ’cause life don’t treat failures kindly.’ ”