In this deeply moving and resourceful memoir, the beloved actor and New York Times bestselling author takes aim at the stigma attached to mental illness by writing candidly and humorously about his own struggle with clinical depression.

Most people know Joe Pantoliano from his memorable roles in The Sopranos, The Matrix, The Goonies, Risky Business, Memento, The Fugitive, andMidnight Run. But before he became one of Hollywood's most successful character actors, he was "Joey Pants" from Hoboken, the son of a fiercely controlling schizophrenic mother. Growing up Joey always knew something was different with him, too, he just didn't know what. "It was as if I was born with a huge hole inside of me," he writes. Not until much later in life was Joey diagnosed with clinical depression. Now he has a message for the millions of people who suffer from mental illness, and for the friends and family who care for them: You are not alone.

Asylum is the story of Joey's Hollywood success, his undiagnosed mental illness and substance abuse, and how that all led to his eventual awareness, diagnosis and recovery, activism and advocacy. Interweaving deeply personal experience with informative discourse, Pantoliano creates a highly relative and unflinchingly honest memoir about the struggles of being a public figure with a private disease.