Loggia: Tough Guys Finish First

Robert Loggia is your classic movie "tough guy," reports CBS "This Morning" Co-Anchor Mark McEwen. In the new Eddie Murphy movie Holy Man, Loggia plays McBainbridge, the no-nonsense head of a home shopping TV network, a character who is literally "the boss from hell."

Says Loggia, "I think he's Beelzebub, actually Â… You know, I could never function that way in life. It's funny how you can play opposite of what you are. I could never mistreat a fellow worker Â… nor would I take it, as a matter of fact."

Loggia, 68, has played a more benevolent kind of boss before in Big (1988). But it's the tough guys Â… like his Oscar-nominated performance in Jagged Edge (1985) Â… that have made his reputation.

His other movie credits include Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997), Independence Day (1996), Innocent Blood (1992), Prizzi's Honor (1985), Scarface (1983) and, his first film, Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956).

The actor prefers playing tough guys "because there's more meat on the bone, you know? Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy CagneyÂ…they got a lot of muscle in them. Slapping somebody around, pushing grapefruit in the face, and all that. God almighty, it's like, stronger than kissing somebody."

Loggia says, because of his tough-guy roles, he always gets recognized by blue-collar moviegoers across the country. But he says, after making Big, he started getting recognized by what he calls "college-trained yuppies."

Loggia himself holds a B.A. degree in journalism from the University of Missouri at Columbia, from which he graduated in 1951.