James Gandolfini Biography
Born: September 18, 1961
Born and raised in New Jersey, press-shy James Gandolfini forged a film career as a prolific character actor before finally emerging as a bona fide star in the critically-lauded HBO series The_Sopranos. After earning his college degree in 1983, Gandolfini headed to New York to study at the Actors Studio. Supporting himself for almost ten years as a bartender and nightclub manager, Gandolfini's major break came in 1992 with a role in a Broadway version of -A Streetcar Named Desire starring Alec_Baldwin and Jessica_Lange, and his film debut in Sidney_Lumet's A_Stranger_Among_Us. Following small parts in several 1993 films, including the Quentin_Tarantino-scripted True_Romance, Gandolfini played more substantial roles as one of the heavies in Terminal_Velocity (1994), Geena_Davis' neighborhood boyfriend in Angie (1994), one of the submarine crew in Crimson_Tide (1995), and a stuntman-turned-Mob enforcer in Get_Shorty (1995). Equally gifted at playing characters on either side of the law, Gandolfini appeared as the violent neighbor who assaults Robin Wright Penn in She's_So_Lovely (1997) and a cop in Lumet's legal drama Night Falls on Manhattan (1997).
Gandolfini played supporting roles in several more films, including Fallen (1998) and A_Civil_Action (1998), before he was cast as the head of a dysfunctional Mafia family in The_Sopranos. Anchored by Gandolfini's superbly-nuanced performance as Prozac-popping, mother-bedeviled capo Tony Soprano, The_Sopranos was hailed as a TV masterpiece for its alternately funny, surreal and deadly-serious look at New Jersey Mob life. Though he was passed over for the Emmy, Gandolfini won the SAG and Golden Globe Awards for Lead Actor in a TV drama for The_Sopranos' 1999 season. During the series break, Gandolfini appeared as a slimy pornographer in 8MM (1999).
Gandolfini finally added the Emmy to his trophies in 2000 for the second season of The_Sopranos. Despite the inevitable criticism about the series' sophomore slump, there was no question as to Gandolfini's continuing excellence as the New Jersey Mob paterfamilias. Gandolfini followed his Emmy triumph with a supporting role as a gay hit man in The Mexican (2001), easily stealing the film from co-stars Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt. Even as he was earning The Mexican's few good notices in theaters, Gandolfini was garnering still more plaudits for The_Sopranos' controversial third season, as Tony's increasingly delinquent son elicited anguished soul-searching from Tony about his legacy. Though his third Emmy nomination spoke to his formidable TV presence as Tony, Gandolfini also further burnished his movie credits with a small part in Joel Coen and Ethan Coen's Cannes Film Festival award winner The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), and a major starring role as a corrupt Army colonel who goes head-to-head with Robert_Redford's incarcerated general in The Last Castle (2001).
Gandolfini continued to impress on The_Sopranos for the next few years, but he struggled to match that success on the big screen. He was a part of the infamous bomb Surviving Christmas, and had the lead in the never released John Turturro directed musical Romance & Cigarettes. In 2006 he was a part of the high-powered ensemble for Steve Zaillian's All the King's Men that included Sean Penn, Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins, and Kate Winslet. Lucia Bozzola, Rovi
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