[3] In that film she portrayed Janice Rossi, Ray Liotta's mistress, and delivered a performance praised for its passionate and realistic delivery.

[4][5][6][7][8] Her performance is praised as "vivid and immediate", which has not been reflected in retrospectives and oral histories of the film because of her early death.

[10] In 1991 she portrayed Louise in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever,[11] one of several actors who had also appeared in Goodfellas.

[12] Variety critic Tony Scott wrote that "Mastrogiacomo excels as Maggie's loyal friend Gloria" in the USA Network's 1995 television film Tall, Dark, and Deadly.

[14] Mastrogiacomo was raised in Oceanside, Long Island, New York, and died in California on May 2, 2001, at the age of 39, of a bacterial heart infection.