'Genius' shone as tough guy

JAMES Gandolfini was a gentle giant who avoided the spotlight.

JAMES Gandolfini, whose portrayal of an emotionally delicate mob boss in The Sopranos helped create one of television's greatest drama series, was a gentle giant who avoided the spotlight.

In an interview last year the man who played Tony Soprano spoke enthusiastically about a slew of smaller roles following the breathtaking blackout ending in 2007 of the mob drama for which he was the much-publicised face.

"I'm much more comfortable doing smaller things," Gandolfini said. "I like the way they're shot; they're shot quickly. It's all about the scripts . . . and I'm getting some interesting little scripts."

Gandolfini, who won three Emmy Awards for The Sopranos, worked steadily in film and on stage after the series ended. He earned a 2009 Tony Award nomination for his role in the celebrated production of God of Carnage.

The Sopranos creator David Chase remembered Gandolfini on Wednesday as a genius. "Anyone who saw him even in the smallest of his performances knows that," he said. "He is one of the greatest actors of this or any time. A great deal of that genius resided in those sad eyes."

Gandolfini grew up in Park Ridge, New Jersey, 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 (118kg) 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 in which 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 died in August last year, had praised Gandolfini's talent for fusing violence with charisma -- which he would perfect as Tony Soprano.

In Scott's 1993 film True Romance, Gandolfini played a tough guy who beat Patricia Arquette's character to a pulp while offering jarring, flirtatious banter such as, "You gotta lot of heart, kid." Scott called Gandolfini "a unique combination of charming and dangerous". He continued with supporting roles in Crimson Tide, Get Shorty, The Juror, Lumet's Night Falls on Manhattan, She's So Lovely and A Civil Action (1998). But it was True Romance that piqued Chase's interest.

While Gandolfini's performance in The Sopranos was indelible and career-making, he refused to be stereotyped as the bulky mobster who was a therapy patient, family man and apparently effortless killer. He played CIA director Leon Panetta in Kathryn Bigelow's Osama bin Laden hunt docudrama Zero Dark Thirty. In Chase's 1960s period drama Not Fade Away, he played the old-school father of a wannabe rocker. And in Andrew Dominik's crime flick Killing Them Softly, he played Mickey, an aged, washed-up hit man, alongside Brad Pitt, Ray Liotta and Ben Mendelsohn.

He initially had knocked back Dominik because his proposed character "had some overtones, similarities to people I've played in the past", he said last year. Gandolfini went on: "I think he said, 'Shut up. You're the guy to do this. And you're going to do it.' And so, after the 900th time he said that, I was like, 'OK, I'll do it. Just leave me alone.' And I loved the dialogue, but (Mickey) is a disgusting human being. I did some pretty disgusting stuff during The Sopranos and I was hesitant to step back into those shoes."

There were also comedies such as the political satire In the Loop, and 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 focused on a cause he held dear: veterans affairs. Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq (2007) profiled 10 soldiers and marines who had cheated death but continued to wage personal battles long after their military service had 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 US Civil War.

"Do I think a documentary is going to change the world?" Gandolfini said 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."

He once told Time magazine: "I'd also never been around actors before . . . and I said to myself, 'These people are nuts; this is kind of interesting.' "

Last year, Gandolfini said he gravitated to acting as 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. 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 any more."

Gandolfini is survived by his wife, Deborah Lin. He had a son, Michael, with Marcy Wudarski, his first wife.
AP

OBITUARY
James Gandolfini
Actor.
Born New Jersey, September 18, 1961.
Died Rome, June 19, aged 51.