[1][2] He played the tough guy Perry in the 1979 film The Wanderers, and Anthony 'Meat' Tuperello in the 1981 comedy Porky's and its sequels.

In 1981, he played a former football player turned mountain man in the John Belushi film Continental Divide.

In 1990, Ganios appeared as a mercenary in Die Hard 2, casually murdering a church caretaker, and memorably meeting his death when Bruce Willis stabs him in the eye with an icicle.

One of those films was Rising Sun, in which he revisits his matchstick-chewing The Wanderers hero as an adversary for Sean Connery.

Ganios died of heart failure on February 18, 2024, at age 64 after being hospitalized for a spinal-cord infection.