James Gandolfiniが逝った

Not long after "The Sopranos" began airing, James Gandolfini remembers someone banging on the door of his Manhattan apartment late at night. "So I opened the door and the guy just turns white," Gandolfini said in a recent magazine interview. "All of a sudden I realize, `Oh ... he thinks I'm Tony."' Any blurring of the line between actor Gandolfini and troubled mob boss Soprano is understandable given the towering achievement of Gandolfini's performance, which resumes Sunday on HBO. The 45-year-old actor has portrayed the iconic criminal for eight years now, passionately channeling his similarities into the character. "I'm playing an Italian lunatic from New Jersey, and that's basically what I am," Gandolfini has said. The actor and character differ in many ways, of course, including their attitudes toward homicide. While Tony Soprano is a larger-than-life figure, Gandolfini is exceptionally modest and obsessive — he has described himself as "a 260-pound Woody Allen." He didn't begin acting until his mid-20s, then became a little-known character actor before "The Sopranos" made him one of the most recognizable faces in television history. Gandolfini is notoriously press-shy and declines nearly all interview requests — including those from The Associated Press for this article. His usual response is that there are so many other actors more interesting than him.