People News
James Gandolfini post 'The Sopranos'
By Stone Martindale
Apr 8, 2007, 20:15 GMT

James Gandolfini hopes that you don't ever confuse him with his well-crafted crime boss alter-ego, Tony Soprano. 

Gandolfini has only his talent to blame for the convincing performance as mob boss Soprano in the popular show that resumes tonight, Sunday on HBO.

The 45-year-old actor has portrayed Soprano for eight years. "I'm playing an Italian lunatic from New Jersey, and that's basically what I am," Gandolfini has said in past interviews, reports CBS News.

CBS claims in real-life, Gandolfini is exceptionally modest and obsessive, describing himself as "a 260-pound Woody Allen."

The actor is press-shy and declines nearly all interview requests according to the AP.

Gandolfini, like Soprano, is a son of New Jersey. His father was a building maintenance man at a Catholic school and his mother was the cafeteria chief at a different Catholic school. According to CBS News, his parents often spoke Italian at home.

"My father always said a million times, 'We're peasants'," Gandolfini told Rolling Stone in a 2001 interview.

"It's just a little odd for me, to get that slightly different treatment sometimes. And I'm uncomfortable with it. ... I want nothing to do with privilege."

In an old interview with GQ, Gandolfini cites an old girlfriend's tragic death that affected him deeply.

"I might not have done what I've done" without her death, he told GQ, adding that the experience led him to seek a release through acting. He would later describe the reason he acts as to "vomit my emotions out of me."

Odd jobs in New York were broken up with various tries in acting schools.

Gandolfini's big film break was in Sidney Lumet's "A Stranger Among Us"  in 1992.  Director Tony Scott cast him as a tough in the violent 1993 film, "True Romance."

Now the Untitled Ernest Hemingway film project to be directed by Philip Kaufman seems to be percolating, and according to IMDB, Gandolfini is cast as Hemingway, with Robin Wright Penn cast as Martha Gellhorn.  Attaboy productions is producing, Mark Armstrong is the executive producer, with Gandolfini listed as a producer too.