Francis Capra was born on April 27, 1983 in New York, and raised in the Bronx. Discovered by Robert De Niro and Chazz Palminteri when they were casting for the film A Bronx Tale (1993), he began to work as a child actor and moved to Los Angeles with his mother Ann Marie Capra and his siblings. His father was in jail for most of Francis' childhood before his eventual shooting death in 2003.