James Gandolfini, 1961–2013

James Gandolfini had a method for inhabiting the character of temper-prone Tony Soprano, the Mafia boss he became famous for playing on HBO’s The Sopranos. The actor would deliberately drive himself into a rage, hitting himself on the head or depriving himself of sleep. “Drink six cups of coffee,” he said, describing his technique. “Or just walk around with a rock in your shoe. It’s silly, but it works.” Indeed it did. Gandolfini made Tony Soprano one of the most complex and memorable characters in TV history—a mob boss who could kill men with his bare hands, yet express with just a look a complex inner world of self-doubt, sadness, and angst. “He was a genius,’’ said the show’s creator, David Chase. “A great deal of that genius resided in those sad eyes. I remember telling him many times, ‘You don’t get it—you’re like Mozart.’”

Gandolfini was a New Jersey native, said The New York Times, brought up in a family where Italian was the first language. He attended Rutgers University, then worked in Manhattan bars and nightclubs until his acting career took off. In the 1990s, he “made gangster roles a specialty,” playing a mob hit man twice—opposite Brad Pitt in True Romance (1993) and then opposite Demi Moore in The Juror (1996). But he was still “largely unknown” when TV producer Chase tapped him in 1999 to play Tony Soprano, the conflicted paterfamilias of a New Jersey crime syndicate.

The structural and emotional complexity of The Sopranos made it “the instrument of a new age of television,” said the Los Angeles Times, and Gandolfini’s portrayal of the main character was central to its success. Tony Soprano was, “as the situation demanded, a villain, a hero, a sex symbol, and a slob.” The blunt-speaking mob kingpin struggled to deal with his family at least as much as with rival gangsters-. Over six seasons, Gandolfini turned Tony into the first of a new breed of complex TV anti-heroes. Mad Men’s Don Draper and Breaking Bad’s Walter White “owe him everything.”

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But the “daily descent into Tony’s psyche” took an emotional toll on Gandolfini, said GQ.com. When he divorced his first wife in 2002, court papers revealed issues with cocaine and alcohol, as well as arguments during which he would “repeatedly punch himself in the face out of frustration.” Friends say he was afflicted with enormous self-doubt, believing himself to be “a fat guy from New Jersey” who had trouble memorizing lines, not a real actor. He behaved erratically during filming, sometimes failing to show up on set for hours or days. Then, out of guilt, he would shower his cast and crew with extravagant gifts like massages or expensive sushi.

“Gandolfini talked openly of struggling to adjust to life after Tony Soprano,” said Bloomberg.com. Although he took small parts in movies such as In the Loop and The Taking of Pelham 123,it was not until he starred in the Broadway show God of Carnage in 2009 that he “regained himself as an actor.” He recently produced two documentaries about post-traumatic stress in the military. He died of a heart attack while on a trip to a film festival in Italy.

Gandolfini once said he identified with Tony Soprano’s psychological distress more than his murderous rage. “I’m a neurotic mess,” he said in 2001. “I’m really basically a 260-pound Woody Allen.”