James Gandolfini: The Real Life Of The Man Who Made Tony Soprano - Plot & Excerpts
The Pressures of Success (2003–2007) Once, when The Sopranos was in full swing, Jim Gandolfini found himself passing someone in a doorway only to see the other man’s face go white with fear. Befuddled, he went on inside, and then it hit him: “Oh, he thinks I’m Tony.” It’s one thing if an actor becomes famous playing Superman, say, or maybe a wizard, or a space explorer. But if your character is a kind of masquerade, like the don of the New Jersey mob, which exists right now, this afternoon, just across the river from a really big city that everybody knows is actually here, it can live with you like it lives in the minds of its fans. The fans can be rich and important people, but the alienation is the same. “When people want to ask you to dinner sometimes and they don’t know you,” Jim told GQ’s Chris Heath in 2004, “they want Tony Soprano to come to dinner. They don’t want Jim Gandolfini to come to dinner. I would bore the fucking tits off them.” Method actors have a long history of consternation over their talent, particularly as they grow older.
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