Word: gandolfini
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Dates: during 1999-1999
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...SOPRANOS This HBO drama reinvented the Mafia genre with Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini, in front), a besieged, postpatriarchal, Prozac-popping capo not truly the master of his family or his Family. But the show didn't stop there. Structured less like an episodic series than a seamless suite, it redefined TV storytelling. Watch it weekly, and it's an addictive saga; watch several at a stretch, and its rich vocabulary of metaphors and motifs submerges and resurfaces with novelistic grace...
...native of the New Jersey suburbs, Gandolfini, 37, was a latecomer to acting, but in the nine years since he committed himself to it, he has managed to deliver intensely layered performances that are devoid of the promiscuous emoting and, seemingly, of the cerebral prep work that can make more experienced actors' work--Al Pacino's in the '90s, say--less than what it should be. As Tony, Gandolfini is masterly at conveying the simmering rage beneath his character's humanity. He brings all the right sweaty fidgetiness to a man whose life demands that he take his daughter...
...point, Chase recalls, Tony was supposed to be angry at his nephew-employee, and the scene called for the elder Soprano to give the younger a light slap. Gandolfini thought it would be truer to have Tony go for his throat. "That taught me a lot about my character," Chase reflects. "It helped keep me honest...
...Gandolfini discovered the stage after spending years as a Manhattan bouncer and nightclub manager. When a friend took him to an acting class in the late '80s, he was left so unsettled and challenged by a focusing exercise that involved threading a needle that he knew he had to return. "I'd also never been around actors before," says Gandolfini, "and I said to myself, 'These people are nuts; this is kind of interesting.'" After touring Scandinavia in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire ("I remember lots of old people falling asleep in dinner theaters," he says), Gandolfini immersed...
...kind of egos you're going to encounter," says Sopranos co-star Edie Falco, "but he just doesn't have one." 8mm director Joel Schumacher was equally impressed by the actor's lack of pretension and gift for capturing a character's telling moment or gesture. He recalls how Gandolfini, who plays a pornographer in the film, persuaded him to have a diary hidden in a toilet tank instead of in a silver chest. "Life had taught him that's where the stash is kept," says Schumacher. Bet Ed Norton wouldn't have known that...