Memorial Page for James Gandolfini (née James J. Gandolfini Junior)

James Gandolfini (born 18 September 1961 in Westwood, New Jersey; died 19 June 2013 in Rome) was an American actor and producer. He became world-famous as mob boss Tony Soprano in the HBO series “The Sopranos”, which premiered in 1999 and ran for six seasons. The role won him three Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. On Broadway he was nominated for a Tony Award in 2009, and for HBO he produced two documentaries about war veterans, a cause close to his heart.

Childhood in New Jersey

Gandolfini’s father came from Borgo Val di Taro, not far from Parma. In New Jersey he worked as a laborer and later as head custodian at Paramus Catholic High School. His mother, Santa, was born in the United States but grew up in Naples; back in America she worked in food service at a high school. At home, his parents spoke Italian with their son.

James grew up in Park Ridge in Bergen County. At Park Ridge High School he played basketball and acted in school plays, graduating in 1979. When his acceptance letter from Rutgers University arrived, he sat at the kitchen table with his parents, wondering how to pay for it and whether he even wanted to go. In the end he followed his two older sisters to Rutgers, soon had the time of his life there, and graduated in 1983 with a degree in communications.

Detours to the stage

After college Gandolfini moved to New York, where he worked as a bartender, bouncer and nightclub manager. At 25 he tagged along with an acquaintance to an acting class. He was immediately interested and scared to death at the same time, he later recalled, and ended up staying two years.

In 1992 he made his Broadway debut in a small part, playing Steve Hubbell in a revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire” starring Alec Baldwin and Jessica Lange. He later also appeared on Broadway in “On the Waterfront”. His film debut came in Sidney Lumet’s “A Stranger Among Us” (1992). In 1993 he played a brutal tough guy in Tony Scott’s “True Romance”. Scott called him a unique combination of charming and dangerous, and it was this very role that caught the interest of writer David Chase. Supporting roles followed in films such as “Crimson Tide”, “Get Shorty” (1995), “The Juror” (1996), Lumet’s “Night Falls on Manhattan” (1997), “She’s So Lovely” (1997) and “A Civil Action” (1998).

Tony Soprano

When David Chase chose him to lead his HBO series, Gandolfini was still largely unknown. He himself had expected them to cast some good-looking guy, “not George Clooney but some Italian George Clooney”. Tony Soprano is a New Jersey mob boss who goes into therapy for panic attacks while trying to balance his work and his family. Without the scenes with psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi, played by Lorraine Bracco, you would not care about this man nearly as much, Gandolfini once said. Bracco remembered having had the greatest sparring partner in the world, a Muhammad Ali. His scenes with Edie Falco as his wife Carmela were likewise praised for their honesty and intensity; Falco considered herself lucky to have spent ten years as his close colleague.

The role made him famous. At the 2000 Golden Globes he won Best Actor in a Television Drama Series; that same year Edie Falco and Nancy Marchand also won Golden Globes for their roles in the show. He was nominated again in each of the following three years. The Television Academy awarded him the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2000, 2001 and 2003; in all he was nominated six times in that category. In 2004 his alma mater inducted him into the Rutgers Hall of Fame. In 2007 the series ended with an abrupt cut to black.

A cause: the veterans

Gandolfini used his fame to draw attention to wounded soldiers. After visiting Iraq and the Walter Reed military hospital, he made the 2007 HBO documentary “Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq”, in which soldiers wounded in the Iraq War tell how they narrowly survived. In 2008 it earned him an Emmy nomination as executive producer. In 2010 came “Wartorn: 1861–2010”, about the history of post-traumatic stress disorder in the military, again with him as executive producer.

In March 2010 he and his fellow cast member Tony Sirico visited US troops stationed in Kuwait on a USO tour. Variety described him as a vocal advocate of wounded military veterans, even though he otherwise kept out of the spotlight.

After The Sopranos

Gandolfini was content with the work that came after the series ended. “I’m much more comfortable doing smaller things,” he told the Associated Press in December 2012. In 2009 he returned to Broadway: in Yasmina Reza’s comedy “God of Carnage”, opposite Jeff Daniels, he played Michael, a Brooklyn father who feels straitjacketed by his wife’s attempts to sand off his rough edges. The performance earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor.

On screen he appeared in the comedy “In the Loop”, in Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are” (2009), in Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, “Zero Dark Thirty”, and as an aged, washed-up hit man in “Killing Them Softly”. For David Chase he played the old-school father of a would-be rocker in “Not Fade Away”. In the HBO film “Cinema Verite” (2011) he portrayed a pioneering reality TV producer. Through his company Attaboy Films he developed his own projects; as executive producer of HBO’s “Hemingway & Gellhorn” he received another Emmy nomination in 2012. The exceptionally modest actor once described himself as “a 260-pound Woody Allen”.

Family

With his former wife Marcy, Gandolfini had a son, Michael. In 2008 he married Deborah Lin; their daughter Liliana was born in 2012. Michael Gandolfini became an actor himself and in 2021 played the young Tony Soprano in the film “The Many Saints of Newark”, the role that had made his father famous.

Death in Rome

In June 2013 Gandolfini was on holiday in Rome. He was on his way to the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily, where he was due to receive an award at the closing ceremony. On the evening of 19 June he suffered cardiac arrest. He arrived at the Policlinico Umberto I hospital at 10:40 p.m.; after resuscitation efforts in the ambulance and at the hospital failed, he was pronounced dead at 11 p.m. He was 51. The autopsy confirmed a heart attack.

HBO paid tribute to him as a great talent but, more importantly, a gentle and loving person who treated everyone with equal respect, no matter their title or position. David Chase said: “He was a genius.” A great deal of that genius, he added, resided in his sad eyes. On 27 June 2013 family, friends and fans said goodbye at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York. Among the mourners were his co-stars Edie Falco, Steve Buscemi and Michael Imperioli, as well as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Legacy

Two films were released only after his death. In Nicole Holofcener’s comedy “Enough Said”, opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus, he played his last leading role, a romantic one. His final film role of all came in Michaël Roskam’s crime drama “The Drop” with Tom Hardy, in which he plays Cousin Marv, who runs a bar that bears his name. The film was released in September 2014.

In his hometown of Park Ridge, Park Avenue at the intersection with Kinderkamack Road has been called “James Gandolfini Way” since late 2013. Among those attending the dedication were Sopranos cast members Steve Schirripa, Vincent Curatola, Tony Sirico, Dominic Chianese and Vincent Pastore. In 2014 Gandolfini was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame, where Vincent Curatola described his friend as a “self-effacing, humble man of the people”. TV writer Alan Sepinwall said of Gandolfini’s signature role: “TV as we know it today wouldn’t exist without Tony.”