18 September 2026 marks 65 years since the birth of American actor James Joseph Gandolfini Jr., best known for playing Tony Soprano. He was born in 1961 in Westwood, New Jersey, into a family of Italian heritage, graduated from Rutgers University and came to acting after other jobs.

He worked on New York stages and then in cinema, in films including “True Romance”, “Get Shorty”, “Crimson Tide” and “A Civil Action”. The characters were often hard, but the performances left hesitation and vulnerability visible, not only physical force.

In 1999 HBO’s “The Sopranos” began. Gandolfini played Tony Soprano, the head of a criminal network trying to hold family, illegal business and panic attacks in the same frame. This article is about the actor’s craft, not the “glory” of the character’s violence. The series depicts organised crime; it does not recommend it.

The performance changed expectations of a television-drama lead: menace, humour, tenderness and moral contradiction in the same shot. Gandolfini won three Primetime Emmy Awards for the role. He continued in film, theatre and in producing documentaries about military veterans.

He died in Rome in 2013, aged 51. Among his later appearances was the comedy-drama “Enough Said”, in a quieter register than the series that made him famous.

At 65 years from his birth, Gandolfini’s legacy lies in the complexity he brought to characters and in raising television drama to a level of performance comparable with cinema — not in romanticising crime.

Image: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff / U.S. Navy, James Gandolfini in Kuwait City, 2010. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Not a still from “The Sopranos”. Cropped to 16:9. Licence. Original file.

Sources consulted: Television Academy — James Gandolfini; Encyclopaedia Britannica — James Gandolfini.