He made his small-screen debut guesting on "Barney Miller" and soon began turning up on such shows as "Mary", "Beauty and the Beast", "MacGyver", "The A-Team", "Miami Vice" and "Hill Street Blues". From 1988-1995, he played his star-making part, Eldin Bernecky, Candice Bergen's ever-present housepainter and hip confidante, on "Murphy Brown" (CBS). In 1995, Pastorelli starred in his own short-lived sitcom as a bicycle messenger in "Double Rush" (CBS), also produced by Diane English.
His TV-movie roles have shown a great deal of versatility. Of course, he started with bits in "Diner" (CBS, 1983), "I Married a Centerfold" (NBC, 1984) and "California Girls" (ABC, 1985). But after his "Murphy Brown" fame, Pastorelli began getting good character parts. He was a nasty bounty hunter in "Robin Cook's 'Harmful Intent'" (CBS, 1993), Jean Smart's schizophrenic husband in the heart-warming "Yarn Princess" (ABC, 1994) and was in the ensemble of Ernest Thompson's all-star "West Side Waltz" (CBS, 1995).
Pastorelli's breakthrough film role was as a frontiersman driving Kevin Costner across the country in 1990's Oscar-winning "Dances With Wolves". Although he had made his debut alongside Bette Midler and Shelley Long in "Outrageous Fortune" (1987), he is perhaps better recalled as the hood from whom the undercover Eddie Murphy wants 2,000 American Express cards in the opening Detroit segment in "Beverly Hills Cop II" (also 1987). Other credits include providing the voice of Tony in "FernGully: The Last Rainforest" (1992), playing Whoopi Goldberg's manager in "Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit" (1993) and co-starring as a former victim of Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Eraser" (1996). Also in 1996, he co-starred as one of the reporters trying to disprove the angelic credentials of John Travolta's "Michael" in Nora Ephron's successful film. Pastorelli continued to work on the big screen in the crime caper "The Asphalt Quintet" (lensed 1996) and the fantasy "A Simple Wish" (1997).