"I wasn't as afraid of being arrested as I was of being shot at," Leguizamo admits. "I hung out and did a couple [drug] runs with some guys and a married couple. I went to suppliers in Queens, did runs in Alphabet City and [saw] the homes where people stashed it.

"It's bizarre," he adds. "It's like living like an animal — always living in fear, always suspect. I wouldn't have been so afraid, except they were looking over their shoulders all the time and telling me, 'Keep moving. We can't stand anywhere. We gotta keep going.'

"I was a little scared of [getting caught], too," he points out, "but I wasn't carrying and I wasn't using. And they knew the cops better than the cops knew who they were."

Why would a successful entertainer like Leguizamo endanger himself just for a little indie flick? Especially one helmed by first-time writer-director Franc. Reyes — who's actually a choreographer-songwriter by trade?! "I've been wanting to do a gangster film since Carlito's Way," he explains. "When you're growing up in these neighborhoods, these guys are charming. They are personable, and they take care of the people who are their own. I was protected by a couple [of them]; they protected me from other gangs, from getting beat up.

Poor Uncle Junior. For awhile now, the Sopranos crime boss — played by Dominic Chianese — has worn an electronic ankle bracelet while under house arrest. By this season's end, the old man's racketeering trial will reach its climax: Will he spend his golden years in jail, or get off like a Teflon Don?

"I would tell you what happens, but I might get clipped if I do that," Richard Portnow tells TV Guide Online. The 49-year-old actor — who has played Soprano family mouthpiece Hal Melvoin since the HBO series began — can offer only this teasing tidbit: "The final episodes of the season will embrace the trial and the outcome. There's a very good possibility that we'll know a lot more about Junior's fate before the bar of justice."

As for the rest of the Soprano clan's fates, Portnow couldn't squeal even if the Feds flipped him like Adriana and Big Pussy Bonpensiero. He swears he knows nothing! "The way [producer] David Chase works is, he doesn't give you the entire script unless you're in most of the episode," he explains. "So I haven't even seen the complete scripts for the final episodes. Woody Allen works the same way. It's a strange way to work because it keeps you off balance. But I will be in the courtroom with Uncle Junior, defending him!"

Portnow — who was Howard Stern's dad in 1997's Private Parts — knows better than to cross mobsters. "I'm from New York, and back in my 20s, some of my friends were Italian guys who were 'connected up,'" he recalls. "For a while there, I thought I was Italian myself — until I got beaten up to within an inch of my life in a [Mafia] social club. True story! I came with my friend, whose father was an organized crime figure. He got into a beef with someone, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they threw both of us a beatin'.