LOS ANGELES — James Gandolfini was a virtual unknown when cast in The Sopranos. But he broke ground with his signature portrait of the show’s title character, Tony Soprano, the head of a fictional New Jersey mob family.
Gandolfini, who died on Wednesday from a possible heart attack in Italy at the age of 51, created a gangster different from any previously seen on American television or film. He was capable of killing enemies with his own hands but prone to panic attacks. He loved his wife, Carmela, played by Edie Falco, and was a doting father, but he carried on a string of extramarital affairs.
He regularly saw a therapist to work out his anxiety problems and issues with his mother.
By the start of the show’s final season in 2007, Gandolfini suggested he was ready to move on to more gentle roles once his TV mobster days were over.
“I’m too tired to be a tough guy or any of that stuff any more,” he said. “We pretty much used all that up in this show.”
The programme, which earned Gandolfini three Emmy Awards as best lead actor in a drama series, was considered by many critics at the time as the finest drama to have aired on American television.
The series was a major factor in establishing HBO, a pay-cable network once focused on presentations of feature films, as a powerhouse of original dramatic television and in shifting to TV the kind of sophisticated storytelling once reserved for the big screen.
The show won the Emmy as best drama series in 2004 and again in 2007 after its final season.
His role also paved the way for a parade of popular prime-time shows built around profoundly flawed characters and anti-heroes, from Dexter and Breaking Bad to Mad Men and Nurse Jackie.
David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, paid tribute to his former star in a statement remembering him as “a genius” and “one of the greatest actors of this or any time”.
“A great deal of that genius resided in those sad eyes. I remember telling him many times, ‘You don’t get it. You’re like Mozart.’ There would be silence at the other end of the phone,” Chase recounted. REUTERS
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