1. James Gandolfini was best known for his portrayal of Tony Soprano, the Italian-American Mafia crime boss in HBO's television series The Sopranos.
37 Facts About James Gandolfini
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James Gandolfini received acclaim for playing against type starring in the romantic comedy Enough Said.
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James Gandolfini is known for his roles on Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and God of Carnage, the latter earning him a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination.
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In 2013, James Gandolfini died of a heart attack in Rome at the age of 51.
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James John Gandolfini was born in Westwood, New Jersey, on September 18,1961.
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James Gandolfini's mother, Santa, was a high school food service worker who was born in the US and raised in Naples.
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James Gandolfini's parents were devout Catholics who spoke Italian at home.
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James Gandolfini graduated in 1979 from Park Ridge High School, where he played basketball, acted in school plays, and was named the "Class Flirt" in his senior yearbook.
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James Gandolfini worked as a bartender and club manager in Manhattan prior to his acting career.
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James Gandolfini made his Broadway theatre debut in the production of A Streetcar Named Desire as Steve Hubbell.
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James Gandolfini appeared in the 1995 Broadway production of On the Waterfront as Charley Malloy.
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James Gandolfini stated that one of his major inspirations for his character was an old friend of his who was a hitman.
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James Gandolfini was cast as insurance salesman and Russian mobster Ben Pinkwater in the action film Terminal Velocity.
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James Gandolfini was cast as a mob enforcer with a conscience in the legal thriller film The Juror.
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James Gandolfini was invited to audition for the part of Tony Soprano after casting director Susan Fitzgerald saw a short clip of his performance in True Romance, ultimately receiving the role ahead of several other actors including Steven Van Zandt and Michael Rispoli.
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James Gandolfini won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series along with the rest of the cast.
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James Gandolfini was making $1million per episode during the show's final season, making him one of television's highest-paid actors.
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James Gandolfini underwent knee surgery on June 2,2006, which pushed the production of the second part of the final season back by several months.
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James Gandolfini was recommended for the role by co-star Brad Pitt.
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James Gandolfini starred in the action drama film The Last Castle that same year.
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James Gandolfini returned to the stage in 2009, starring in Yasmina Reza's play God of Carnage on Broadway acting alongside Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis, and Jeff Daniels.
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James Gandolfini told Charlie Rose that he was the first one to sign onto the project after seeing the production in London.
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James Gandolfini received a Tony Award nomination in the category of Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play for his role in the play but lost to Geoffrey Rush, who played the lead in Exit the King.
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James Gandolfini voiced Carol, one of the titular Wild Things, in the fantasy film Where the Wild Things Are.
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In 2010, James Gandolfini produced another documentary with HBO, which analyzed the effects of posttraumatic stress disorder throughout American history, from 1861 to 2010.
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In 2012, James Gandolfini reunited with The Sopranos creator David Chase for Not Fade Away, a music-driven production set in 1960s New Jersey, and the latter's feature film debut.
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Two films which James Gandolfini completed before his death in June 2013 were released posthumously.
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James Gandolfini received posthumous Best Supporting Actor awards from the Boston Society of Film Critics and the Chicago Film Critics Association as well as multiple nominations, including a nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role.
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James Gandolfini is credited as an executive producer on the HBO miniseries The Night Of, which premiered in 2016.
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James Gandolfini was set to star in the miniseries when it was pitched to HBO in 2013, but the network ultimately decided not to go ahead with the show.
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HBO reversed its decision a few months later, and the show was green-lit, with James Gandolfini still set to star; however, he died before filming began.
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James Gandolfini married Marcy Wudarski in March 1999, and they divorced in December 2002.
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James Gandolfini previously lived in New York City and owned a piece of land on the Lake Manitoba Narrows in Canada, then moved to a 34-acre property in Chester Township, New Jersey.
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James Gandolfini had been planning to travel to Sicily a few days later to receive an award at the Taormina Film Fest.
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The day after James Gandolfini's death, Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band dedicated a performance of the entire Born to Run album to James Gandolfini during a concert in Coventry on the UK leg of his tour.
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In 2014, James Gandolfini was posthumously inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
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In 2024, in the weeks leading up to the release of his longtime passion project Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola revealed to Rolling Stone that James Gandolfini gave him a lot of great suggestions for the film back when he read for the role of Mayor Franklyn Cicero, who was ultimately portrayed by Giancarlo Esposito, back when Coppola did a reading of an early draft in 2001.