Success came relatively late to James Gandolfini—if not by the standards of scholars, judges, and surgeons, then at least by the standards of actors. At the age of thirty-seven, overweight, sad-eyed, and modestly credited in motion pictures, he auditioned for the role of Tony Soprano fully expecting to fail: “I thought that they would hire some good-looking guy, not George Clooney, but some Italian George Clooney, and that would be that,” he once said. Gandolfini premièred in the lead role of “The Sopranos” in January, 1999, and, eighty-six episodes later, finished in June, 2007, in a haze of ambiguity. The screen went black and we were not sure if Tony was still eating with his family or fatally perforated by a hit man’s bullets.
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