When colleagues, fans and nosy reporters ask actor and writer Chazz Palminteri how he came to live in 9,500 square feet of stone and marble, gables and sky-high ceilings, columns and archways and yards of Schumacher fabric on six acres in Westchester County, the author of “A Bronx Tale” tells a Bedford tale.

“When I was young and we lived in a fifth-floor walk-up in the Bronx, we would often get in the car and drive north,” said Mr. Palminteri, 65, who played the guy you definitely didn’t want to get in a car with in movies like “Analyze This,” “A Bronx Tale,” “Diabolique” and “Bullets Over Broadway”(a role that earned him an Oscar nomination). “And one time we got off at Bedford. I remember this distinctly. We saw all these houses there, these big houses.”