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He en­tered the act­ing pro­fes­sion via New York City the­ater in the late 1970s after study­ing at the New York Acad­emy of The­atri­cal Arts and the Ac­tors Stu­dio, fi­nan­cially main­tain­ing him­self by work­ing as a bar­tender. In 1977 he made his stage debut in a pro­duc­tion of Rebel With­out a Cause. He also per­formed in pro­duc­tions of The Rain­maker, and Death of a Sales­man. Later in his ca­reer he per­formed at Lon­don's South Bank the­ater in A Street­car Named De­sirein 2002.

In 1982 Pa­s­torelli headed west to Los An­ge­les seek­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in Hol­ly­wood. Spend­ing the early 1980s em­ployed in tele­vi­sion bit-part ap­pear­ances, he found a niche play­ing street­wise char­ac­ters, ap­pear­ing also in sup­port­ing roles in the cin­ema films Out­ra­geous For­tune (1987) and Bev­erly Hills Cop II (1987). His first sub­stan­tial cin­e­matic role came with Dances with Wolves (1990). His big break in tele­vi­sion came with the role of the gruff but lov­able house painter "Eldin Ber­necky" on the se­ries Mur­phy Brown, which was a rat­ings hit, and he stayed with the show for seven sea­sons from 1988 to 1994. Mur­phy Brown pro­ducer Diane Eng­lish was suf­fi­ciently im­pressed with his abil­i­ties that she worked with him to pro­duce his first star­ring ve­hi­cle, the tele­vi­sion sit­com Dou­ble Rush which lasted one sea­son in 1995. Two years later, he starred in the Amer­i­can adap­ta­tion of the British de­tec­tive se­ries Cracker(1997–1999). As...

On the evening of March 15, 1999, dur­ing an in­ci­dent at his Hol­ly­wood home, Pa­s­torelli's 25-year-old girl­friend, Chare­mon Jonovich, was killed by a gun­shot to the head. Dur­ing the au­thor­i­ties' in­ves­ti­ga­tion that fol­lowed, Pa­s­torelli tes­ti­fied that in the midst of an ar­gu­ment be­tween the two of them, she sud­denly pro­duced a hand­gun and killed her­self. The in­ci­dent was in­ves­ti­gated as an ac­ci­dent or sui­cide, and the Los An­ge­les Coro­ner's Of­fice de­clared the cause of death undetermined.

Pa­s­torelli was ex­on­er­ated of re­spon­si­bil­ity for Chare­mon Jonovich's death and re­ceived pub­lic ex­pres­sions of sym­pa­thy within Hol­ly­wood and from the Los An­ge­les media, but his ca­reer went into no­tice­able de­cline af­ter­wards. He ap­peared in two more cin­ema pro­duc­tions in small roles in the early 2000s as well as some minor sup­port­ing roles in tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tions. He de­vel­oped a friend­ship with Glenn Close to­wards the end of his ca­reer, and ap­peared along­side her in the tele­vi­sion films The Bal­lad of Lucy Whipple, and in South Pa­cific in 2001. In 2002 he again ap­peared along­side her at Lon­don's Royal Na­tional The­atre in a per­for­mance of Ten­nessee Williams' A Street­car Named Desire. In 2002 he co-founded the Gar­den State Film Fes­ti­val. His posthu­mous final screen ap­pear­ance was in the movie Be Cool(2005).

Pa­s­torelli was found dead at the age of 49 at his home in the Hol­ly­wood Hills on March 8, 2004, from a nar­cotics over­dose. At the time of his death he had been fore­warned that au­thor­i­ties were plan­ning on ar­rest­ing him for fur­ther ques­tion­ing re­gard­ing the shoot­ing of Chare­mon Jonovich in March 1999. A re­view of the orig­i­nal ev­i­dence had re­sulted in her death being re­clas­si­fied as a homi­cide, with Pa­s­torelli being iden­ti­fied as a sus­pect for fur­ther investigation. The Coro­ner's Of­fice re­ported Pa­s­torelli died of a "fatal blood con­cen­tra­tion of mor­phine". Pa­s­torelli's body was in­terred in the mau­soleum at Saint Cather­ine's Ceme­tery in Sea Girt, New Jer­sey.

Pa­s­torelli had two daugh­ters, Gi­anna Li Pa­s­torelli (born Feb­ru­ary 6, 1998) with Chare­mon Jonovich, and Gi­an­nina Marie Pa­s­torelli (born March 6, 2000) with his then girl­friend, Jalee Carder.