The Sopranos star James Gandolfini died in Italy on Wednesday. He once said in an interview he turned actor to release anger, though he didn’t know what exactly he was angry about
James Gandolfini, whose portrayal of a brutal, emotionally delicate crime boss in HBO’s The Sopranos was the brilliant centre of one of TV’s greatest drama series and turned the mobster stereotype on its head, died on Wednesday in Italy. He was 51. He was vacationing in Rome. No cause of death was given.
“He was a genius,” said Sopranos creator David Chase. “Anyone who saw him in the smallest of performances knows that. He is one of the greatest actors of this or any time. A great deal of that genius resided in those sad eyes.”
Gandolfini, who won three Emmy Awards for his role as Tony Soprano, worked steadily in film and on stage after the series ended. He earned a 2009 Tony Award for his role in the celebrated production of God of Carnage. Joe Gannascoli, who played Vito Spatafore on the HBO drama, said he was shocked and heartbroken. “Fifty-one and leaves a kid — he was newly married. His son is fatherless now... It’s way too young.”
Gandolfini and his wife, Deborah, who married in 2008, have a daughter, liliana, born last year. The actor and his former wife, Marcy, have a teenage son, Michael. Gandolfini’s performance in The Sopranos was indelible and career-making, but he refused to be stereotyped as the bulky mobster who was a therapy patient, family man and apparently effortless killer. In a December 2012 interview with The Associated Press, a rare sit-down for the star who avoided the spotlight, he was upbeat about a slew of smaller roles following the breathtaking blackout ending in 2007 of The Sopranos.
He played Defense Secretary leon Panetta in Kathryn Bigelow’s Osama bin laden hunt docudrama Zero Dark Thirty. And he worked with Chase for the ‘60s period drama Not Fade Away, in which he played the old-school father of a wannabe rocker.
In Andrew Dominick’s crime flick Killing Them Softly, he appeared as an aged, washed-up hit man. There were comedies such as the political satire In the loop, and the heartwarming drama Welcome to the Rileys, which co-starred Kristen Stewart.
Deploying his unsought clout as a star, Gandolfini produced (though only sparingly appeared in) a pair of documentaries for HBO and focussed on a cause he held dear: veterans affairs.
Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq (2007) profiled 10 soldiers and Marines who cheated death but continued to wage personal battles long after their military service ended.
Four years later, Wartorn: 1861-2010 charted victims of post-traumatic stress disorder from the US invasion of Iraq all the way back to the Civil War. “Do I think a documentary is going to change the worldIJ” Gandolfini had said with characteristic modesty during an interview about the latter film. “No, but I think there will be individuals who will learn things from it, so that’s enough.”
His final projects included Animal Rescue, directed by Michael R Roskam and written by Dennis lehane. It is expected to be released next year. He also agreed to star in a seven-part limited series for HBO, Criminal Justice, based on a BBC show. He shot a pilot for the project.
Gandolfini grew up in Park Ridge, NJ, the son of a building maintenance chief at a Catholic school and a high school lunch lady. While Tony Soprano was a larger-than-life figure, Gandolfini was exceptionally modest and obsessive — he described himself as “a 260-pound Woody Allen.” After earning a degree in communications from Rutgers University, Gandolfini moved to New York, where he worked as a bartender, bouncer and nightclub manager. When he was 25, he joined a friend of a friend in an acting class, which he continued for several years.
Gandolfini’s first big break was a Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire where he played Steve, one of Stanley Kowalski’s poker buddies. His film debut was in Sidney lumet’s A Stranger Among Us (1992). Director Tony Scott, who killed himself in August 2012, had praised Gandolfini’s talent for fusing violence with charisma — which he would perfect in Tony Soprano. Gandolfini played a tough guy in Tony Scott’s 1993 film True Romance who beat Patricia Arquette’s character to a pulp while offering jarring, flirtatious banter like, ‘You got a lot of heart kid.’
In his 2012 AP interview, Gandolfini said he gravitated to acting as a release, a way to get rid of anger. “I don't know what exactly I was angry about,” he said.
“I try to avoid certain things and certain kinds of violence at this point," he said last year. "I'm getting older, too. I don't want to be beating people up as much. I don't want to be beating women up and those kinds of things that much anymore.”