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Rise to Fame
He'd been a solid character actor for years - bartending in Manhattan between gigs, doing Broadway, playing hired muscle in True Romance - when HBO came looking for someone to carry a mob drama. A casting director spotted him in that True Romance clip and brought him in to read for Tony Soprano. Whatever happened in that room convinced David Chase that nobody else could do it. The Sopranos debuted in 1999 and changed what television was allowed to be. Three Emmys, five SAG Awards, one Golden Globe, and a character so fully inhabited that Chase has said there would be no show without him.
In the Spotlight
The HBO contract dispute in 2003 tells you everything about where he stood. He was making $400,000 an episode, sued HBO for breach of contract, and HBO came back with a $100 million countersuit against him. They eventually settled at around a million an episode, and after the dust cleared, he cut $33,000 checks to every supporting cast member out of his own pocket. The reputation he left behind is massive: Tony Soprano gets credit for kicking off the prestige TV antihero era, and the character consistently ranks as one of the most complex in television history.
Side Notes
He described himself as a "260-pound Woody Allen," which is funnier and more accurate than anything a critic wrote about the real James Gandolfini. The man who played one of television's most terrifying figures was famously soft-spoken and generous off set. He got a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play in 2009 for God of Carnage on Broadway, proving he could hold a stage live too. The Sopranos era wasn't pretty for him personally - a 2002 divorce filing detailed serious substance problems - but he stayed in the work until the end.
Final Chapter
He died June 19, 2013, in Rome, where his teenage son Michael found him collapsed in their hotel bathroom - a heart attack at 51. The funeral at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine drew Edie Falco, Lorraine Bracco, Michael Imperioli, and Steve Buscemi. HBO released a tribute documentary that December. Spike Jonze dedicated his Academy Award-winning Her to him. His hometown of Park Ridge, NJ officially named a street James Gandolfini Way before the year was out.