James Gandolfini’s OTHER Greatest Roles

Earlier today, news broke that actor James Gandolfini died from a severe heart attack while on vacation in Italy, aged 51.

Gandolfini, who was born and raised in New Jersey to a couple of Neapolitan immigrants, was best known for his role as the anxiety-ridden mob boss Tony Soprano in The Sopranos — recently named the best written show of all time by the Writers’ Guild Of America. Marked by his mischievous smirk, Gandolfini made Tony one of TV’s iconic characters, bringing an abrupt intensity to the warm yet adulterous family man, loyal yet ruthless criminal. Over the show’s eight-year run, the role earned him three Emmys, and he’s also the only three-time winner of the TCA Award for Individual Achievement in Drama.

His career, which included 51 roles (some yet to be released), was surprisingly diverse. For a tough, bulky, bald-headed Italian dude who grew up idolising DeNiro’s nutcase energy in Mean Streets, the guy didn’t hesitate to play against type. Alongside the heavy-breathing intensity of Tony Soprano were other roles that highlighted his humour, warmth, (ahem) vocal chops, and yes, bridled aggression, and he even produced two war documentaries for HBO — Alive Day: Home From Iraq and Wartorn: 1861-2010 — which explored post-traumatic stress disorder and related issues affecting returning veterans (“He was a special man, a great talent, but more importantly a gentle and loving person who treated everyone no matter their title or position with equal respect,’’ HBO said in a statement to Variety today).

Tony Soprano may be the enduring highlight Gandolfini will be remembered for, but his career was full of them. Let’s honour the rest…

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As Carol in Where The Wild Things Are (2009)

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As Big Dave Brewster in The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)

This bizarre noir – generally overlooked in Coen Bros. film round-ups, but worth seeking out– features one of Gandolfini’s first film roles in the wake of The Sopranos’ explosive success. As Brewster, the department-store proprietor secretly carrying on with a married woman (Frances McDormand’s Doris) and being anonymously blackmailed by her wise-to-it husband Ed (Billy Bob Thornton), Gandolfini wasn’t exactly stretching his limits – you know Big Dave woulda loved Bada Bing’s. But it didn’t matter: the extraordinary scene above is another lasting testimony to Gandolfini’s gift at boiling the menacing men he excelled at playing right down to their mawkish, terrified essence. (Nicholas Fonseca)

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As General Miller in In The Loop (2009)

There are few actors who have uttered as many curse words on screen as Gandolfini. One who might be able to challenge that title is Peter Capaldi, as political satire The Thick Of It’s king of profane putdowns, Malcolm Tucker. So when Gandolfini’s General Miller goes head-to-head with Tucker in Armando Ianucci’s spin-off In The Loop, we get the film’s highlight when Gandolfini, with a glint in his eye, calls Tucker a “scary little poodle fucker”, a “pussy-drip” and a “squeezed dick” in 90 short seconds. He then threatens, every bit as menacingly as Soprano might: “I’ll hit you so hard in the face you’ll be shitting teeth”.

Underplaying characters like this was Gandolfini’s bread and butter. Just like Tony, General Miller is a hilariously cynical man of power who finds it impossible to hide his contempt for the idiots and fools that surround him. And if he was worried about being typecast as a gangster, Gandolfini might also have feared becoming Hollywood’s go-to military man – he played the Director of the CIA in Zero Dark Thirty and Colonel Winter in The Last Castle. (David Wild)

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As Nick Murder in Romance & Cigarettes (2005)

I stumbled upon this an hour ago. I haven’t seen the musical, but I had to post this scene.

According to IMDB: “A down-and-dirty musical set in the world of working-class New York, tells a story of a husband’s journey into infidelity and redemption when he must choose between his seductive mistress and his beleaguered wife.” Would watch. (Steph Harmon)

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As Michael in God Of Carnage (2009)

This morning, when news of James Gandolfini’s passing broke, my mum actually called to tell me the news — needless to say, we’re pretty big Sopranos fans in our family. A few years ago, my parents were lucky enough to catch Gandolfini performing in the Tony Award-winning God Of Carnage on Broadway. The play is about four wealthy parents who themselves get into a tiff after their sons fight on a playground, and the loveable-yet-menacing Gandolfini was the alpha male of the bunch. My folks raved about his performance, and even managed to get their poster signed after the show. I’m seething with jealousy to this day, and sad that I’ll never get to see the big guy in action. (Alasdair Duncan)

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As Virgil in True Romance (1993)

Gandolfini’s breakout role was as mob enforcer Virgil in True Romance. When I first watched it, I was used to seeing him as the portly Tony Soprano and was a little startled by how lean and handsome he is here: not yet a bearish presence, but almost a balletic one. The tone of friendly menace he would come to make his own is evident in this scene, where he asks stoner Floyd (Brad Pitt) where Clarence (Christian Slater) is:

And when he goes to the motel, it’s shocking to see him explode into ultraviolence in this almighty smackdown with Alabama (Patricia Arquette). Irritatingly, I can’t find the original fight scene online, but here’s a montage set to Alicia Keys:

It’s a wonderfully choreographed, bombastically destructive fight, and part of what makes it so great is the way the power shifts between Virgil and Alabama. At the start, he’s cocky: he thinks this’ll be a walkover. But her desperation wins through, and you can see fear and dismay dawning on Virgil. Gandolfini also gives a wonderfully gestural performance: the regretful eye-roll after he sucker-punches Arquette; pausing to preen in the mirror. Virgil’s spectacular death underlines the tragedy of Gandolfini’s own, terrible premature passing. (Mel Campbell)

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As Tom Valco in Surviving Christmas (2004)

You’ve seen this movie on television during the holidays. It is terrible. Ben Affleck plays the worst kinda jerk, a glib, jittery ad-man, obnoxiously clad in skivvies and reindeer sweaters. It was released right in the middle of Gandolfini’s Sopranos run, and shit was it weird seeing Don Tony sporting a lumberjack beard and maniacally bickering over lighthearted nonsense. Let’s remember the other side of this intense actor: a guy who didn’t take the racket so seriously that he was above tackling some seasonal stupidity at least once in his career. Hopefully he got paid a ton. (Rob Moran)

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As Winston Baldry in The Mexican (2001)

In Gore Verbinski’s genre-patchwork road movie, Gandolfini brought his easy warmth to the role of Leroy, the gay psycho-killer with a heart of gold who rescues Julia Roberts’ Samantha from a mall-restroom assassination. As they take the world’s oddest road trip in her pearly-green Beetle (the most early-’00s element of a film that’s aged pretty well), the rapport between Roberts and Gandolfini is a joy to watch, and he resists any temptation to give into cliche in his performance. (Caitlin Welsh)

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Just James Gandolfini being James Gandolfini

We don’t know anything, really, about the lives of the people who inhabit the fictional characters that stick long in our minds like particularly gummy tunes. But they stay with us. Of all the bits of tribute flotsam that are floating around now about the late, great James Gandolfini, these stick out particularly for me in the annals of Being A Good Dude and hero to late bloomers everywhere…

Being young and hungry in New York City and living like a gypsy:

“Mr. Gandolfini, 26 years old, has never had his name on a lease, never paid more than $400 a month in rent and never lived in one place more than 10 months. His wanderer’s existence has given him sojourns, some as brief as two months, in Hoboken, N.J.; Astoria, Queens; Clinton and the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and Park Slope and Flatbush in Brooklyn.

‘MOVING, to me, is no big deal,’ said Mr. Gandolfini, whose calling is the theater but whose living comes mostly from bartending and construction. ‘I have a system down. I throw everything in plastic garbage bags and can be situated in my new place in minutes. Without my name on a lease, I’m in and out. I have no responsibilities.'”

Then evidently never forgetting this time in his life when much later he found huge success with his most famous role: 

“When — after winning a big payday in contract negotiations — Gandolfini handed out gifts of cash to the other regular actors. ‘After Season 4, Jim called all the regulars into his trailer and gave us $33,333 each, every single one of us.'”

Don’t stop believing.

The table from the Sopranos’ finale in Holsten’s, NJ has been reserved in his memory. (Elmo Keep)