As 'Godfather' novelist Mario Puzo, Buffalo actor Patrick Gallo has the role of a lifetime

But the 49-year-old actor felt like he lived it when he watched it when he was about 12 years old with his father at the family’s Lancaster Avenue home.

“It was quite an experience,” said Gallo, who

“It was like watching a home movie,” said Gallo. “My father had a lot of friends who were in similar businesses who weren’t necessarily on paper, legal situations. So I knew a lot of these guys and they were in my life. I was a child, and they were my dad’s friends and they loved me, and they embraced me.

“And I spent a lot of dinners sitting at a table with mobsters and detectives at the same table eating the same pasta and (drinking) the same wine. I saw this life and this dynamic and these voices and clothes and their cologne.

“When I saw ‘The Godfather’ it was familiar to me,” he added. “Everything was very real, and I could sense it ... things that happened in my life I could relate to it. It hit home.”

Was he saying his father had friends who were mobsters?

“Sure, absolutely,” said Gallo. “There were mobsters around, definitely.”

The Gallo name is prominent near the end of the series with mobster Joey Gallo – who was famously killed at Umbertos Clam House in 1972 – shown leaning on producer Al Ruddy for money to allow him to finish the movie.

At one point, Patrick thought he was related to Joey Gallo.

“I’m not,” said Patrick. “I thought I was as a kid because there was a book in the house about him that my mother would always yell at me to put down. So I assumed it. Then I found out, no, we weren’t related.”

It isn’t his first role in a mob film.

Gallo appeared in the Martin Scorsese film “The Irishman” as Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone in a cast that included Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

“They treated me like an equal and we improvised a lot and it was a dream come true to work with Scorsese, De Niro and Pacino all at the same time,” said Gallo. “It was pretty overwhelming.

“In between every single time we had a new set up, I’d go outside and get on my phone with my mother, crying, to tell her that I was doing that. She really helped me in my career.”

He auditioned for the Puzo role. After getting the role, he estimated he’s heard the famous line “he’s got an offer he can’t refuse” up to 250 times over the past seven months.

“Everybody couldn’t wait to say it,” said Gallo, who visits Buffalo often and is married to a hometown girl he met in kindergarten and finally romanced when they were both in their 30s.

Playing Puzo, who the film depicts as a novelist in debt before he wrote “The Godfather,” is the biggest part of his career to date.

“It was a very, very, very, very exciting gig,” said Gallo, “knowing it would be the biggest up to this point and a unique story to tell. Pretty amazing.”

In a recent conference call, director Dexter Fletcher called Gallo the heart and warmth of a film with an excellent cast that includes Miles Teller as Ruddy, Juno Temple (“Ted Lasso”) as his assistant Bettye McCartt, Matthew Goode as outrageous producer Robert Evans, Giovanni Ribisi as mobster Joe Colombo, Colin Hanks as bottom-line executive Barry Lapidus, and Dan Fogler as Francis Ford Coppola, whose artistic vision resulted in “The Godfather” being hailed as the best film of all time.

“I thought that was a very touching thing and it moved me, and it warmed my heart,” said Gallo of Fletcher’s remarks.

He started acting at Lafayette High School, starring in the musical “Cabaret.”

“It is the only production of ‘Cabaret’ where Herr Schultz has an Italian dialect,” he cracked.

He studied drama at Erie Community College before heading to New York City at age 19 and becoming a student at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy.

“It was pretty nerve-wracking but it worked and it changed my life,” said Gallo.

“The Offer” could change his life as well.

The recent 50th anniversary of the film received so much attention that much of the film’s history in “The Offer” won’t surprise viewers whose memories were recently refreshed.

The very entertaining film that Goode practically steals with his performance as Evans documents the cartwheels and deals that Ruddy had to do to overcome the challenges and roadblocks to make the film. They included Evans’ personal issues; fights over casting Marlon Brando as the Godfather and Al Pacino as his youngest son Michael; Paramount’s budget-minded executives; Frank Sinatra and Italian-Americans who feared it would smear their heritage.

Gallo said his family didn’t have any problems with the portrayal of Italians.

“They loved the movie,” recalled Gallo. “I don’t ever remember any discussions about it smearing Italian-Americans. No. It was celebrated, an important work of art in the community I was in.”

He first read the book as a teenager and again before he started filming "The Offer."

He wasn’t aware of all the mob-related stories inside a film that Coppola famously believed was a metaphor for America and starts with the legendary line, “I believe in America.”

“I know what Al (Ruddy) has spoken of and the stories I’ve read,” said Gallo. “Nothing fully confirmed but that a lot of people discussed the challenges of the film and how the mob was involved. I’ve heard many, many stories about that. That is really what I have to go on. There were certain people who wanted certain things said in a certain way and felt threatened by certain things. That was all very public information.”

Almost all of Gallo’s work ends after the first three episodes, after which Puzo goes into the background.

Gallo said he doesn’t fear being typecast.

“In ‘The Offer,’ I play an author. And Puzo was not a fan of gangsters. There is a certain aspect of my personality that lends itself to that," Gallo said. "But the opportunities that have been coming my way suggest there is a little more faith that I can step out of that kind of typecasting.”

And what does he think his late father would say about being cast as Puzo so many decades after they watched “The Godfather” together?

“I think he would be very proud,” said Gallo.