On this day in 2013, James Gandolfini, the actor best known for his role as New Jersey crime boss Tony Soprano on the TV series \u201cThe Sopranos,\u201d which debuted in 1999 and ran for six seasons, dies of a heart attack while vacationing in Rome, Italy. He was 51.<\/p>\n
The son of working-class parents of Italian descent, Gandolfini was born on September 18, 1961, in Westwood, New Jersey, and graduated from Rutgers University in 1983. Afterward, he worked as a bartender and club manager in New York City, drove a delivery truck and studied acting. He made his film debut in 1987\u2019s low-budget \u201cShock! Shock! Shock!\u201d and went on to play supporting character roles in such movies as \u201cTrue Romance\u201d (1993), \u201cGet Shortly\u201d (1995) and \u201cThe Juror\u201d (1996).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Gandolfini shot to stardom in the groundbreaking HBO drama \u201cThe Sopranos,\u201d which centered on the violent, complicated Tony Soprano. Gandolfini\u2019s portrayal of the brutal mobster, who lives in the New Jersey suburbs where he deals with ordinary family issues and sees a therapist after suffering from panic attacks, earned him three Emmy Awards for outstanding lead actor in a drama. Critics called Tony Soprano one of the greatest TV characters of all time, and by the show\u2019s final season Gandolfini was being paid a reported $1 million per episode.Additionally, \u201cThe Sopranos\u201d was credited with paving the way for edgier TV shows and flawed leading characters such as corrupt detective Vic Mackey on \u201cThe Shield,\u201d school teacher-turned-meth dealer Walter White on \u201cBreaking Bad\u201d and cynical, philandering adman Don Draper on \u201cMad Men.\u201d<\/p>\n
After \u201cThe Sopranos\u201d ended in 2007, Gandolfini acted on Broadway, appeared in movies including \u201cZero Dark Thirty\u201d (2012) and produced several documentaries about injured American military veterans. Following Gandolfini\u2019s June 2013 death, the governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, ordered all state government buildings to fly their flags at half-staff for a day in honor of the popular Garden State native.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On this day in 2013, James Gandolfini, the actor best known for his role as New Jersey crime boss Tony Soprano on the TV series \u201cThe Sopranos,\u201d which debuted in 1999 and ran for six seasons, dies of a heart attack while vacationing in Rome, Italy. He was 51. The son of working-class parents of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3511],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hollywood"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}