Vincenzo Amato has appeared in more than 20 films, earning a best-actor nomination in his native Italy’s equivalent of the Oscars. Angelina Jolie directed him in the hit film Unbroken. His TV credits include Instinct, Madame Secretary, The Blacklist, Elementary, The Good Wife and Boardwalk Empire.

He also has a career as a sculptor, working in metal and wood. Yet for all those accomplishments, the 53-year-old Maplewood resident says “the most beautiful day” in his life was marked by his first visit to New Jersey. It was 1993, and Amato had yet to start his acting career, when he first rode through the Holland Tunnel on a trip to Irvington. A self-taught ironworker back home in Italy, he couldn’t help but admire the steel trusses of the Pulaski Skyway.