Sopranos

A familiar face in Woody Allen movies, the actor became widely know for his portrayal of Paulie Walnuts on the hit HBO series.

“I was this 30-year-old ex-con villain sitting in a class filled with fresh-faced, serious drama students,” Mr. Sirico recalled in the Daily News interview. Mr. Sirico followed that with more than a decade of small television and movie roles, capped by his part as the flashy mobster Tony Stacks in “Goodfellas” (1990). He brought at least one admirable lesson from the mob world to “The Sopranos.” He insisted that his character never be portrayed as a rat, someone who would snitch on his crime family. He was a boxing trainer in “Mighty Aphrodite” (1995), an escaped convict in “Everyone Says I Love You” (1996), a matter-of-fact jailhouse cop in “Deconstructing Harry” (1997) and a gun-toting gangster on Coney Island in “Wonder Wheel” (2017). Once “The Sopranos” hit the air in 1999, it became enormously and widely popular. “When I watched them, I said to myself, ‘I can do that,’” he told The Daily News in 1999. When the “Sopranos” cast appeared in a group shot on the cover of Rolling Stone in 2001, Paulie stood with a baseball bat casually slung over his right shoulder. He worked in construction for a while but soon yielded to temptation. Paulie was the kind of guy who would participate in an intervention for a drug addict, and when it was his turn to speak, punch the guy in the face. There was an air about them that was very intriguing, especially to a kid.” He hated being stuck with an almost $900 restaurant check but could appreciate a tasty ketchup packet on a cold night in the Pine Barrens when there was nothing else to eat. He appeared in several of them, beginning with “Bullets Over Broadway” (1994), in which he played the right-hand man of a powerful gangster turned theater producer.

Sirico played a major role in the HBO drama that started in 1999 and became an influential hit early in the era of prestige television.

... I knew right away this was a role to kill for." Sirico often played Italian-American mobsters, including a small part in "Goodfellas," Martin Scorsese's popular and critical hit from 1990. Sirico also took a comic turn voicing the talking dog Vinny on the animated show "Family Guy."

Tony Sirico, who played the impeccably groomed mobster Paulie Walnuts in The Sopranos and brought his tough-guy swagger to films including Goodfellas, ...

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