Actor Joe "Pants" Pantoliano made a special appearance in Ridgefield at the Italian American Club Mutual Aid Society's monthly pasta dinner Monday night, mingling with the crowd and speaking about his personal experience with mental illness.

The Wilton resident – an Emmy-award winning actor best known for his roles in "The Sopranos," "The Matrix," "The Fugitive" and "Memento" – now sells a pasta sauce to raise mental health awareness, a subject about which he produced and directed a film entitled "No Kidding! ME 2!!"

The Italian American Club, formed in 1913, was pleased to welcome Pantoliano for their monthly dinner, which they've held since the 1940s.

They recently teamed up in June with their neighbor upstairs, Nature's Temptations, and its chef, Liz Gagnon, for the pasta dinners.

Gagnon said Pantoliano often comes into the store.

"He has a real passion for what he's doing," she said. "He's willing to talk about his story, and he's going to be in town, so he said he'd stop by."

Pantoliano, who deals with clinical depression, said that mental illness needs to be seen as a disease, not a social stigma.

"I had worked so hard to achieve my goals, and I thought these things would make me feel good," he said. "But I still had no energy, I felt sad, I had no appetite, and I lost my desire to live."

It was after he got help that he realized he had been looking at his illness in the wrong way and that the problem was in fact genetic – many members from his family also suffer from mental illness.

The documentary has been praised by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration "for addressing the effects of clinical depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder in military families."

All the proceeds from his and childhood friend Joe Pepe's pasta sauces go to the nonprofit organization behind the film.

"We want to get our society to embrace the idea of mental health education," Pantoliano said. "By teaching children the benefits of good mental hygiene in the same way we teach them to wash their hands or brush their teeth, we encourage them to speak freely about mental illness."