James Gandolfini

• 1. Introduction

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  James Gandolfini once stopped in the middle of an audition and walked out. David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, told the story to The Guardian in a 2013 interview. Gandolfini felt that he "didn't prepare right." Later that night he finished the audition in his garage. The moment hints at an actor who held himself to a hard standard. This story begins in New Jersey and leads to the role that changed television. Then it follows what came after. Where did that discipline come from? What did Gandolfini do once the fame arrived? And why did so many colleagues speak of him with such warmth when he was gone?

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• 2. Jersey Roots

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  James John Gandolfini was born in Westwood, New Jersey, on the 18th of September 1961. His father, James Joseph Gandolfini Sr., had been born Giacomo Giuseppe Gandolfini in Borgo Val di Taro, in the Parma area of Italy. He came to the United States as a toddler, worked as a bricklayer and cement mason, and later became head custodian at Paramus Catholic High School. His mother, Santa, was born in the United States, raised in Naples, and worked in high school food service.

  The elder Gandolfini received a Purple Heart in World War II. He often bought car tires at a shop owned by Salvatore Travolta, whose son was the actor John Travolta. The two sons became friends, and they later co-starred in five films.

  Both parents were devout Catholics who spoke Italian at home. That upbringing gave Gandolfini a strong Italian-American identity, and he visited Italy regularly. He had two sisters, Johanna and Leta, who were thirteen and ten years older than he was.

  Park Ridge, New Jersey, is where Gandolfini grew up, and in 1979 he graduated from Park Ridge High School. He played basketball and acted in school plays. His senior yearbook named him "Class Flirt."

  At Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Gandolfini worked as a bouncer at an on-campus pub, and in 1983 he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communications. In Manhattan he then worked as a bartender and a club manager. Acting reached him through a friend. Roger Bart took him along to a Meisner technique class, and Gandolfini ended up studying for two years under Kathryn Gately at the Gately/Poole Conservatory. His first film role, in a 1989 New York University student film called Eddy, was still ahead.

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• 3. Tough Guys First

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  In 1992 Gandolfini made his Broadway debut, playing Steve Hubbell in A Streetcar Named Desire. He returned to Broadway in 1995 as Charley Malloy in On the Waterfront. Through those years he held various jobs in Manhattan and took low-budget film roles.

  True Romance, released in 1993, gave him Virgil, a brutal mob enforcer. Gandolfini said an old friend who was a hitman was a major inspiration for the character. The film disappointed at the box office, but his performance won critical praise.

  In 1994 he played Ben Pinkwater, an insurance salesman and Russian mobster, in the action film Terminal Velocity. The next year was busier. He played Navy Lieutenant Bobby Dougherty in the submarine film Crimson Tide. He also played Bear, a bearded ex-stuntman with a Southern accent, in Get Shorty.

  Barry Sonnenfeld directed Get Shorty, which was based on a book of the same name and drew positive reviews. Its cast earned an Actor Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. In 1996 The Juror cast Gandolfini as a mob enforcer with a conscience. Critics disliked the film, but they liked his role.

  A casting director named Susan Fitzgerald would soon see a short clip from True Romance, and that clip would change his career.

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• 4. Becoming Tony Soprano

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  In 1995 the television writer and producer David Chase pitched his idea for The Sopranos to networks including Fox and CBS before HBO picked it up. The series follows Tony Soprano, a New Jersey mobster who tries to balance family life with his job as boss of a crime family.

  Fitzgerald's memory of that clip led to an invitation for Gandolfini to audition. He won the part ahead of several other actors, among them Steven Van Zandt and Michael Rispoli.

  The show debuted in 1999 and ran until 2007. Gandolfini played Tony through all six seasons and 86 episodes. Fans and critics welcomed his work. Deadline Hollywood said Tony Soprano helped "usher in the era of the antihero" for television.

  Gandolfini described several ways of summoning Tony's anger. He would deliberately hit himself on the head, stay up all night, drink several cups of coffee, or walk around with a rock in his shoe.

  Three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series followed, along with a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama. He and the rest of the cast also won an Actor Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. In 2017 Entertainment Weekly ranked him the 42nd Greatest TV Icon of All Time.

  By the final season Gandolfini was earning $1 million per episode, which made him one of television's highest-paid actors. On the 2nd of June 2006 he had knee surgery, and production of the second part of that season slipped by several months.

  After Gandolfini's death in 2013, Chase said in a Fresh Air interview that, "without Jim Gandolfini, there is no Sopranos. There is no Tony Soprano."

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• 5. Beyond the Boss

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  In 2001 Gandolfini played Winston Baldry, a gay hitman, in the adventure comedy The Mexican. His co-star Brad Pitt had recommended him for the part. The performance won him Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role at the 2002 Outfest Outie Awards in Los Angeles. That same year he starred in the action drama The Last Castle.

  John Turturro, a director and friend, wanted Gandolfini for the musical romance comedy Romance & Cigarettes. Turturro had to wait until The Sopranos stopped filming. Gandolfini also showed a lighter side. He appeared in a 2002 episode of Sesame Street. In 2004 he appeared on Saturday Night Live in a part titled "New Jersey Resident," a take on Tony Soprano that commented on the Jim McGreevey sex scandal. In 2006 he even voiced Tony in the video game The Sopranos: Road to Respect.

  Gandolfini and Paramount Pictures executive Alex Ryan founded the production company Attaboy Films, which signed a development deal with HBO in 2006. In 2007 Gandolfini and HBO produced Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq, a documentary about injured Iraq War veterans. It earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special but lost to Autism: The Musical.

  Wartorn: 1861-2010 followed. This second HBO documentary traced the effects of posttraumatic stress disorder across American history. It featured interviews with American military officials about PTSD and their efforts to help affected soldiers. It premiered at The Pentagon and drew favorable reviews. Gandolfini was also executive producer of Hemingway & Gellhorn, about Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn. The film premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival to mixed reviews, yet it still earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Miniseries or Movie.

  In 2009 Gandolfini returned to Broadway in Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage, alongside Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis, and Jeff Daniels. He told Charlie Rose that he was the first to sign on after seeing the production in London. Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote, "They're a marvelously giving, balanced ensemble." Gandolfini earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play but lost to Geoffrey Rush, who starred in Exit the King.

  The same year brought two very different screen roles. He played the Mayor of New York in The Taking of Pelham 123, and he voiced Carol, one of the Wild Things, in Where the Wild Things Are. Spike Jonze directed that film, which was based on Maurice Sendak's picture book.

  In 2012 Gandolfini played CIA Director Leon Panetta in Zero Dark Thirty. He also reunited with David Chase for Not Fade Away, a music-driven film set in 1960s New Jersey. It was Chase's feature film debut.

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• 6. Private Man

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  In a 2013 GQ article, Brett Martin observed that Gandolfini did his very best to avoid interviews. When he did give them, he often fell back on some version of "I'm just a dumb, fat guy from Jersey."

  Substance abuse was a struggle for him. Producers and location managers on The Sopranos recalled missed shoots, worries about his health, and an intervention that failed.

  Gandolfini married Marcy Wudarski in March 1999, and they divorced in December 2002. Their son Michael was born on the 10th of May 1999 and later became an actor.

  In 2003 he began dating the sex therapist Lora Somoza. They became engaged before splitting up in 2005. After two years of dating, he married the model and actress Deborah Lin in her hometown of Honolulu on the 30th of August 2008. They had a daughter in 2012.

  Park Ridge remained close to his heart, and he supported its Octoberwoman Foundation for Breast Cancer Research. He had lived in New York City and owned land on the Lake Manitoba Narrows in Canada. Later he moved to a 34-acre property in Chester Township, New Jersey. In 2009 he bought a home in Tewksbury Township.

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• 7. Death in Rome

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  On the 19th of June 2013, Gandolfini was in Rome, planning to travel to Sicily a few days later to receive an award at the Taormina Film Fest. He spent the day sightseeing with his family in sweltering heat. At around 10 p.m., his 14-year-old son, Michael, found him unconscious on the bathroom floor of his room at the Boscolo Exedra Hotel.

  Michael called reception, which called paramedics. Gandolfini reached the hospital at 10:40 p.m. and was pronounced dead at 10:46 p.m. An autopsy confirmed that he died of a heart attack. He was 51.

  On the following day, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band dedicated a performance of the entire Born to Run album to Gandolfini. It came during a concert in Coventry, on the UK leg of their tour. The band's long-time guitarist, Steven Van Zandt, had played Silvio Dante on The Sopranos.

  Gandolfini's body returned to the United States on the 23rd of June 2013. New Jersey governor Chris Christie ordered flags on all state buildings flown at half-staff on the 24th of June to honor him. On the night of the 26th of June, the marquee lights of Broadway theaters were dimmed.

  The funeral service took place on the 27th of June 2013 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in Morningside Heights in New York City. Attendees included Edie Falco, Michael Imperioli, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Lorraine Bracco, Tony Sirico and Julianna Margulies, many of them Sopranos co-stars. Chris Christie, Alec Baldwin and John Turturro attended as well. Gandolfini was later cremated.

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• 8. Afterlife of a Performance

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  TV Guide devoted the entire back cover of its issue of the 1st of July 2013 to his image. Columnist Matt Roush argued that without Tony there would be no Vic Mackey of The Shield, no Al Swearengen of Deadwood, and no Don Draper of Mad Men. Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner had learned his trade as a writer on The Sopranos.

  Bryan Cranston said his Breaking Bad character Walter White would not have existed without Tony Soprano. Brad Pitt, who made three films with Gandolfini, called him a "ferocious actor, a gentle soul and a genuinely funny man." Edie Falco expressed shock and devastation, and David Chase praised him as a "genius."

  Emily Nussbaum wrote in The New Yorker that after his Tony Soprano, "nobody could be under any illusion about what a television actor was capable of." The Atlantic called his influence "seismic" and dubbed him the Marlon Brando of television. Critic Alan Sepinwall wrote that rewatching the series made it clear this was "the greatest dramatic performance in TV history."

  In December 2013, after an online petition begun by one of his high school classmates, Park Ridge nicknamed a section of Park Avenue "James Gandolfini Way." It is the street where he grew up. Signs went up at the corner of Park Avenue and Kinderkamack Road, at a ceremony attended by several former Sopranos co-stars. That same month HBO released James Gandolfini: Tribute to a Friend, with co-star interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. Spike Jonze dedicated his Academy Award-winning film Her to Gandolfini.

  In 2014 Gandolfini was posthumously inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. In 2022 the Montvale service area on the Garden State Parkway was renamed for him, as part of a project honoring several New Jersey figures in the arts, entertainment and sports.

  Enough Said, released after his death, paired him with Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a romantic comedy. Reviews were positive, especially for Gandolfini, who was praised for playing against type. He won posthumous Best Supporting Actor awards from the Boston Society of Film Critics and the Chicago Film Critics Association. He also received an Actor Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role. His final film performance came in The Drop, a crime drama with Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace, released on the 12th of September 2014 to positive reviews.

  When The Night Of was pitched to HBO in 2013, Gandolfini was set to star. HBO first decided against the show, then reversed course a few months later and green-lit it. He died before filming began, and John Turturro took the role. Gandolfini is credited as an executive producer on the miniseries, which premiered in 2016.

  In 2019 his son Michael was cast as the younger Tony Soprano in the prequel film The Many Saints of Newark. Michael watched the series for the first time to prepare, and he described the process as intense.

  In 2024, Francis Ford Coppola told Rolling Stone that Gandolfini had offered many good suggestions for Megalopolis. Gandolfini had read for the role of Mayor Franklyn Cicero during a 2001 reading of an early draft. Giancarlo Esposito ultimately played that part.

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