Here's What We Know About Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano from The Irishman

Who was Tony Pro?

Tony Pro's real name was Anthony Provenzano, and he was born in New York City in 1917. Not much is known about his early life, but by the 1950s, he was president of the Teamsters Local 560 in Union City, New Jersey, and vice-president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He was also a made member of the Genovese crime family.

While The Irishman portrays Pro and Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa as enemies pretty much from the beginning, the two were actually friendly for many years. It was later revealed that the two men were using union funds for their own personal use. Pro went to prison in 1963 for extortion, and Hoffa went to prison in 1967 for bribery and fraud, and they both ended up serving time at the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania.

Jimmy Hoffa and Anthony Provenzano with two other Teamsters leaders during happier times. BusinessInsider USA Images

Their relationship soured while in prison, as Pro learned that he wasn't going to be eligible to get his Teamsters pension anymore. "Jimmy refused to help Pro go around the federal law and get his $1.2 million pension when he went to jail, while Jimmy got his $1.7 million pension even though he went to jail, too," Sheeran claimed in the I Heard You Paint Houses book. Hoffa further angered Pro when he allegedly told him, "Its because of people like you that I got into trouble in the first place."

After they both were released from prison in the '70s, Pro and Hoffa's relationship continued to worsen. They reportedly came across each other during a chance meeting at an airport, and Hoffa is said to have broken a bottle over Pros head, while the mobster told the union boss that he would "rip his guts out with his bare hands and kill his grandchildren."

In 1975, Hoffa disappeared. He had been in Detroit for a meeting with Pro and mobster Anthony Giacalone, but they never showed up. Hoffa was last seen getting into a maroon Mercury in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, but no one knows what happened to him after that.

And while Sheeran later said he was the one that killed Hoffa, the case is still unsolved. However, most experts believe that Pro had something to do with ithe had an infamous grudge against Hoffa, and while some say he was in New Jersey the day of Hoffa's disappearance, other reports place him in Detroit . Pro was named as a suspect on the FBI's report about the case, called the Hoffex Memo , along with Giacalone and Russell Bufalino.

Tony Pro talks with journalists in Florida in 1975. Pro reportedly explained that he was a friend of Jimmy Hoffa and he had nothing to do with his disappearance. BusinessInsider USA Images

And in an interesting twist, Nixon's first public appearance after resigning as President was with Pro and some other Teamsters leaders at a golf course, just ten weeks after Hoffa's disappearance.

Where is Tony Pro today?

In 1978, Pro was convicted of ordering the 1961 murder of Anthony Castellito, the Local Teamsters 560's secretary-treasurer. He was sentenced to 25 years to life for the murder . A month after getting that sentence, Pro was also sentenced to four years for arranging kickbacks on a $2.3 million pension-fund loan. A year after that, he was also convicted on labor racketeering charges, which landed him another 20-year prison term.

Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano arrives for his trial on labor racketeering charges in 1979. BusinessInsider USA Images

Pro died in prison in 1988 at the age of 71. He's buried at St. Joseph's Cemetery in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Which actor played Tony Pro in The Irishman?

English actor Stephen Graham plays Tony Pro in The Irishman. And while it's unclear if Pro ever showed up to meetings in shorts like he did in the movie, the mobster was once described as a "short, stocky and ham-fisted man who bore the scars of his young years as an amateur boxer."

Before the movie's release, Graham talked to Esquire UK about how he got cast for the film. He recounted speaking with De Niro and director Martin Scorsese in Scorsese's house, and the legendary duo spent some time talking amongst each other. "They're gonna say I'm not Italian-looking enough, my accent," Graham recalls thinking. "They don't understand what I'm saying anyway, so how can I pull it off?"

Graham and Scorsese had actually worked together on HBO's Boardwalk Empire before reuniting for The Irishman. In that series, Graham played another notorious and hot-headed crime figure: Chicago gangster Al Capone. Scorsese directed him in the pilot, and was an executive producer for the remainder of the show's run.

After Scorsese told him that he had gotten the Irishman role, Graham said that he "felt like I've just been made, do you know what I mean? Like I'd been accepted into the family."