James Gandolfini could make a threatening man sound hurt without making him harmless. We rate him for the speed and precision of those changes, and for the gentleness that his tougher parts could obscure.
Fi1m perspective
In therapy in The Sopranos (1999), James Gandolfini lets Tony Soprano complain as though being powerful ought to have spared him inconvenience. The slightly nasal voice sounds wounded; we still wonder what he will do with his anger. Gandolfini is superb at this: he makes self-pity persuasive while keeping the threat close enough for us to notice. We laughed at Tony’s grievances and then felt uncomfortable, because Gandolfini’s injured delivery had briefly made them sound reasonable. The performance asks us to recognise something of ourselves in a man whose anger other people have to manage.
The early film parts made more obvious use of his menace. Virgil, the brutal mob enforcer in True Romance (1993), brought him to notice, and Get Shorty (1995) belonged to the same stretch of tough-guy casting. David Chase saw footage of the former performance before casting him as Tony. The Sopranos gave that familiar danger six seasons in which to become more complicated, allowing neediness and wounded pride to matter as much as intimidation.
Chase and his fellow writers give Gandolfini complaints worth listening to without agreeing with Tony’s explanations for himself. His eyes can shift between warmth, sadness and menace; the breathy delivery lets a complaint sound taxing to the man making it. He makes the need for sympathy embarrassingly visible, even when Tony seems certain that he deserves it. The series sometimes indulges those grievances for too long. There are stretches when we would rather the writers moved on, however much Gandolfini can find to do with another complaint.
The later work offers a useful corrective to the tough-guy parts. Voicing Carol in Where the Wild Things Are (2009), he could bring emotional weight to a family film without his physical presence. As Albert in the romantic comedy Enough Said (2013), he had room for a lighter, more delicate performance. Neither needs treating as a surprise once we have noticed how often Tony wants reassurance. Start with The Sopranos, but leave room for Enough Said before deciding what sort of actor Gandolfini was.
Biography
James Gandolfini was an American actor. He was born on 18 September 1961 in Westwood, New Jersey, and died on 19 June 2013 in Rome, Italy.
Gandolfini trained at the Actors Studio after graduating from Rutgers University. He appeared in supporting film roles including Virgil in True Romance (1993), Lt. Bobby Dougherty in Crimson Tide (1995) and Mayor in The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009).
He was best known for playing Tony Soprano in the HBO series The Sopranos (1999–2007). For the role he received three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, a Golden Globe Award and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. He also produced the documentaries Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq (2007) and Wartorn: 1861–2010 (2010), and the television film Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012).
