Gandolfini was a cokehead and unstable.
“The actor, who died on June 19, 2023 at age 51 from a heart attack, earned three Emmy Awards for outstanding lead actor in a drama series for his powerful portrayal of Tony.”
People can’t even get a date right.
It was also something I could not watch on a regular basis. The characters were all disgusting monsters who got away with their crimes. It was like watching a series about successful Gestapo agents.
Yeah, I know. I live in the past, an unrealistic past where the good guys won every time.
Never watched the program. I guess I got my fill of watching criminals every day working in NY State’s prison system all those years. Never watched Breaking Bad either. Didn’t care to watch programs that glorified criminal behavior, or tended to justify criminal behavior, like in Breaking Bad, a teacher with cancer distributing drugs to set his family up financially after he was gone. I retired in 2003, and still won’t watch any programs or movies that take place in prisons. Having worked in that environment for 25 years, I got tired of seeing scenarios presented, that I knew would never actually happen behind bars, never heard of happening, or never saw myself.
Whaaa ... every struggling actor should be so lucky, to have such a part/opportunity.
What really got to him was a cardiac arrest.
In the acting world being a villain is the way to stay employed. If you get really good at a long running role you will get typecast. Being typecast as a villain means you will never run out of job offers. Just look at Christopher Lee. He got major roles in major movies right up until he died at the ripe old age of 93!
Mr. Van Zandt (or should I call you Silvio?), no one is buying old E Street band music? Maybe Edie Falco can get you a gig voicing Humane Society beggar ads.
Some actors are born to play just one roll and that’s it for them and I think for James Gandolfini Tony soprano was his role. I saw him and other stuff, but I didn’t think he was that particularly a gifted actor. In other roles he was okay, but good in that one roll.
He was kind of similar to Ray Sharkey, Ray Sharkey had great success, playing the mob boss Sonny Steelgrave on Wiseguy. And in someways, I thought he was better in the role than Gandolfini was as Tony soprano.
But I will say that Ray Sharkey could actually play other roles and was a really good actor like Gandolfini he had a terrible end
I had only known him previously in the Sopranos and was amazed at his performance in The Mexican.
Incredibly versatile.
I was totally addicted to that show.