Bobby Cannavale answered his own door. There was no assistant hovering. We had to be quiet, Mr. Cannavale said, because on the first floor of their new house, the first proper house in which he has lived, his fiancée, the actress Rose Byrne, was tending to their baby, Rafa, two weeks old.

Softly up the stairs (stairs! Mr. Cannavale had always been confined to one floor, a lifelong apartment dweller) we went. Mr. Cannavale, 47, half Cuban and half Italian, grew up in New Jersey with a stint in Florida in the middle, and spent years looking longingly toward Manhattan until finally he lived there. But life intercedes, and he and Ms. Byrne had a son, Rocco, 22 months, and then another. So he did what dads with their hands full do: He moved to Brooklyn.