Hi, Bryan Here….
This news just sucks and I hate writing about these things. James Gandolfini passed away today in Italy due to a heart attack. He was in Italy for the 59th Taormina Film Festival in Sicily where he was scheduled to participate in a festival event this weekend with Italian director Gabriele Muccino. He is survived by his wife Deborah Lin and his two kids.
It’s very rare that an actor gets a role that is iconic and amazing as Tony Soprano was. I bet if you were asked to think of a great character from television, you would come up with Tony Soprano. Gandolfini got his start with a movie called ‘True Romance’, which was written by Tarantino. He had a wide range with some of my favorite movies of his being ‘Get Shorty’, the recent ‘Killing Them Softly’ and ‘Not Fade Away’. Not to mention his voice work on Spike Jonze’s ‘Where the Wild Things Are’.
Mr. Gandolfini was only 51, meaning he was only 37 years old when ‘The Sopranos’ premiered on HBO all those years ago. You will be missed. You were a great man and one hell of an actor.