Gandolfini hides behind Tony Soprano in final season

NEW YORK - 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 at 9 p.m. on HBO. The 45-year-old actor has portrayed the iconic criminal for eight years now.

"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 more interesting actors. But the man behind the mobster is far from boring.

Gandolfini grew up in Park Ridge, Bergen County, N.J. His father was a building maintenance chief at a Catholic school and his mother the cafeteria chief at another Catholic school. Both parents, having spent their childhoods in Italy, often spoke Italian - though much didn't rub off on their son.

Gandolfini attended nearby Rutgers University and graduated with a degree in communications. When he was 19, Gandolfini's girlfriend of two years died in a car accident. He mentioned her in accepting his third Emmy, in 2003.

"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.

After college, Gandolfini moved to New York, where he worked as a bartender, bouncer and nightclub manager. When he was 25, he joined a friend of a friend in an acting class, which he continued for several years.

Gandolfini's big break was a Broadway production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" where he played Steve, one of Stanley Kowalski's poker buddies. His film debut was in Sidney Lumet's "A Stranger Among Us" (1992).

The role that perhaps most hinted at Gandolfini's talent for fusing violence with charisma was the tough he played in Tony Scott's 1993 film, "True Romance." In a memorable scene, he beats Patricia Arquette's character to a pulp while offering flirtatious banter such as, "You gotta lot of heart, kid."

Scott recalls Gandolfini's audition clearly: "You don't have to be a brain surgeon to spot someone who's got that much talent."

"He's such a unique combination of charming and dangerous, and it's inherent in who he is," he said.

Gandolfini continued with supporting roles in "Get Shorty" (1995), "The Juror" (1996), Lumet's "Night Falls on Manhattan" (1997), "She's So Lovely" (1997) "Fallen" (1998) and "A Civil Action" (1998). But it was "True Romance" that piqued the interest of "Sopranos" creator David Chase.

"Some of the turmoil that's inside of Jim, that pain and sadness, is what he uses to bring that guy to the screen," Chase told GQ.

"The Sopranos" premiered in 1999 to immediate adulation, much of which praised Gandolfini's relatable performance as a mob boss who struggles with average problems. By its second season, "The Sopranos" was a breakout hit that would change the cable TV landscape and make HBO a revered bastion of creativity.

His modest attitude set the tone on the set, said Steve Van Zandt, who plays Tony's consigliere, Silvio Dante. "He's so humble a cat. I think it probably came from being a character actor all those years, and being very surprised - openly surprised - to be cast a lead."

But there was one notable dustup between Gandolfini and HBO. Before production was to begin on season five in 2003, the actor threatened to leave if HBO didn't raise his salary. The network countersued Gandolfini for $100 million. The lawsuits were eventually dropped and Gandolfini approximately doubled his salary of $400,000 per episode.

Gandolfini's personal life also started to appear in the tabloids. Two months after the "Sopranos" premiered in 1999, he married public relations executive Marcella Wudarski. They had a son, Michael, in May of that year, and moved out of Manhattan into a five-acre New Jersey home in 2001.

But in March 2002, Gandolfini filed for divorce. The proceedings dredged up allegations from Wudarski of cocaine and alcohol abuse by Gandolfini. In 2004, he became engaged to writer Lora Somoza, but the couple split in early 2005.

The many breaks in the "Sopranos" schedule have allowed Gandolfini to appear in a number of movies. This month, his latest movie, "Lonely Hearts," will be released.

He has a three-year deal with HBO to create original programming, and his company is currently producing a documentary called "Occupation Iraq," about U.S. soldiers in the war.

The actor's biggest post-"Sopranos" project is a film about Ernest Hemingway, in which he plays the writer. *