Paul Sorvino, the rugged actor — both operatic tenor and figurative sculptor — known for playing calm and often politely quiet but dangerous men in movies like “Goodfellas” and TV shows like “Law & Order,” died Monday. He was 83.
His publicist, Roger Neal, confirmed the death at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. No specific cause was given, but Mr Neal said Mr Sorvino “had some health issues over the last few years”.
Mr. Sorvino was the father of Mira Sorvino, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Woody Allen’s The Mighty Aphrodite (1995). In her acceptance speech, she said her father “taught me everything I know about acting.”
“Goodfellas” (1990), Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed mob epic, comes when Mr. Sorvino is 50 and decades into his film career. His character, Pauly Cicero, was a local mob boss – clumsy, soft-spoken and ice-cold.
“Pauly may have moved slowly,” says Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, his neighborhood protégé in the film, “but that was only because he didn’t have to move for anybody.” (Mr. Liotta died in May of 67 years.)
Mr. Sorvino almost abandoned the role because he couldn’t fully connect emotionally, he told the comedian Jon Stewart, who interviewed a panel of “Goodfellas” alumni at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival. When you “find the backbone” of a character, said Mr. Sorvino, “he makes all the decisions for you.”
That didn’t happen, he recalled, until one day, when he was adjusting his tie, he looked in the mirror and saw something in his own eyes. When he saw what he called “Polly’s death stare,” Mr. Sorvino told The Lowcountry Weekly, a South Carolina publication, in 2019, “I knew at that moment that I had embraced my inner mob boss.” .
He had made his mark on the stage as a very different but perhaps equally soulless character in “That Championship Season” (1972), Jason Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning tragicomedy about the sad reunion of high school basketball players whose glory days have passed. decades. In the original Broadway production, Mr. Sorvino played Phil Romano, a small-town millionaire who arrogantly has an affair with the mayor’s wife.
Mr. Sorvino received a Tony Award nomination for best actor in a play and reprized the role in a 1982 film adaptation.
Paul Sorvino (1939-2022)
The tough actor, who became best known for his role as mobster Paul Cicero in Goodfellas, has died aged 83.
Paul Anthony Sorvino was born on April 13, 1939, in Brooklyn, the youngest of three sons of Fortunato Sorvino, known as Ford, and Marietta (Renzi) Sorvino, a homemaker and piano teacher. The elder Mr. Sorvino, a foreman in a bathrobe factory, was born in Naples, Italy, and immigrated to New York with his parents in 1907.
Paul grew up in the Bensonhurst area of Brooklyn and attended Lafayette High School. His initial career dream was to sing—he idolized the Italian American tenor and actor Mario Lanza—and he began taking vocal lessons when he was about 8 years old.
In the late 1950s, he began playing at Catskills resorts and charity events. In 1963, he received his Actors Equity card as a chorus member in “South Pacific” and “The Student Prince” at the Theater at Westbury on Long Island. That same year, he began studying drama at the American Academy of Music and Drama in New York.
Acting professions were elusive. Mr. Sorvino’s Broadway debut, in the chorus of the musical “Bajour” (1964), ran for nearly seven months, but his next show, the comedy “Mating Dance” (1965), starring Van Johnson, closed on its opening night.
Mr. Sorvino worked as a waiter and bartender, sold cars, taught acting to children and appeared in commercials for deodorant and ketchup. After his first child, Mira, was born, he wrote advertising copy for nine months, but the office job gave him an ulcer.
“Most of the time I was just another out-of-work actor who couldn’t be arrested,” he told The New York Times in 1972. “I had confidence in my abilities and I was mad as hell when other people they were doing I don’t recognize him.”
Then his luck changed. He made his film debut in “Where’s Poppa?” (1970), a dark comedy directed by Carl Reiner, in a small role as the owner of a nursing home. Then came “That Championship Season,” beginning with the Off Broadway production at the Public Theater.
The film role that first gained him wide attention was as Joseph Bologna’s grumbling father in Made for Each Other (1971). Mr. Sorvino, nearly five years younger than Mr. Bologna, wore old man makeup for the role.
He next appeared as a New Yorker robbed by a prostitute in The Panic in Needle Park (1972), but did not immediately fall prey to the cop-and-gangster stereotype. In 1973, he was George Segal’s film producer friend in A Touch of Class and a mysterious government agent in The Day of the Dolphin.
Mr. Sorvino later played a selfish, money-hungry evangelist with a Southern accent in the comedy “Oh My God!” (1977) and God himself in “Devil’s Carnival” (2012) and its 2015 sequel. reporter in love with a ballerina in Slow Dancing in the Big City (1978). In The Reds (1981), he was a passionate Russian-American communist leader just before the Bolshevik Revolution.
He was Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, complete with a German accent, in Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995). And he played Fulgencio Capulet, Juliet’s jealous father with an ancient grudge, in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996).
But in a half-century screen career, Mr. Sorvino’s characters have often been on the wrong side of the law. He played, among others, Chubby de Coco (“Blood Brothers”, 1978), Lips Manlis (“Dick Tracy”, 1980), Big Mike Cicero (“How sweet”, 2013), Jimmy Scambino (“Sicilian Vampire”, 2015) and Fat Tony Salerno (“Kill the Irishman”, 2011).
And in at least 20 roles, he played officers of the law with titles such as detective, captain or chief. For one season (1991-92) he was Sgt. Phil Serretta on NBC’s “Law & Order,” but found the filming schedule too demanding — and hard on his voice.
Mr. Sorvino continued to sing professionally, making his City Opera debut in Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella in 2006.
His personal life sometimes reinforced his image as a tough guy. More recently, in 2018, when the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was on trial for criminal sexual misconduct — and Mira Sorvino had accused him of harassment — Mr. Sorvino predicted that Mr. Weinstein would die in prison. “Because if not, he has to meet me and I will kill him [expletive deleted] – really simple,” Mr. Sorvino said in a widely broadcast video interview.
Four months later, Mr. Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison.
Mr. Sorvino’s last screen roles were in 2019. He played a corrupt senator in the spy comedy Welcome to Acapulco and crime boss Frank Costello in the Epix series The Godfather of Harlem.
He married Lorraine Davis, an actress, in 1966 and they had three children before divorcing in 1988. Mr. Sorvino’s second wife from 1991 until their divorce in 1996 was Vanessa Arico, an agent on real estate. He married Dee Dee Benkie, a Republican political strategist, in 2014.
Mr. Sorvino began making bronze sculptures in the 1970s and finds his work in the non-performing arts particularly satisfying. “That’s why I prefer it,” he told The Sun-Sentinel, a Florida newspaper, in 2005. “No one really tells you how to finish something.”
“Playing on stage is like making a sculpture,” he said. “Acting in movies is like being a sculptor’s assistant.”
Mr. Sorvino is survived by his wife, Dee Dee Sorvino; three children, Myra, Amanda and Michael; and five grandchildren.
Johnny Diaz contributed reporting.
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