Actor James Gandolfini is dead at 51. He suffered a massive heart attack while on a trip to Italy with his son, Michael.
An autopsy on the body of James Gandolfini, the New Jersey-bred actor whose Mafia-boss character survived six seasons of mob hits and panic attacks on “The Sopranos,” will be performed Thursday, the Associated Press reported.
The man behind Tony Soprano was with his teenage son, Michael, 13, in Italy when he suffered a massive heart attack on Wednesday, a source close to the barrel-chested actor said. He was 51.
Gandolfini and his family had spent “a beautiful day out together,” the actor’s assistant, Tom Richardson, told friend Mike Sullivan on Wednesday.
The news floored Gandolfini’s friends, fellow actors and “Sopranos” co-stars, including Steve Schirripa, who was in a box suite at Yankee Stadium when word reached him by phone. The color drained from Schirripa’s face and uncertainty reigned for a half-hour as he and other “Sopranos” cast members, like Lorraine Bracco and Steve Van Zandt called each other, desperate for details.
“I had to get up and leave,” said Schirripa, who played Tony’s brother-in-law, Bobby Baccalieri. “It was like being told a brother had died. Jimmy Gandolfini was as great a friend as he was an actor and a human being.”
“The phone hasn’t stopped. I spoke to a lot of the guys from ‘The Sopranos.’ We were crying,” Schirripa added. “People joke about us being a family. But we are a family.”
Soon enough, Twitter and Facebook exploded with rumors and contradictory information about Gandolfini’s death, including claims that it was a hoax.
But managers Mark Armstrong and Nancy Sanders confirmed the death in a statement: “It is with immense sorrow that we report our client James Gandolfini passed away today.”
“Our hearts are shattered, and we will miss him deeply.”
The stunning news came almost exactly six years after the gut-wrenching and inconclusive series finale of “The Sopranos.”
Gandolfini was a frequent visitor to Italy, where his parents both grew up. His family owns land near Milan. It was initially unclear whether the actor had been suffering from health problems before his sudden death. He was in Italy partly to attend the 59th Taormina Film Festival in Sicily.
Gandolfini had been working on a new TV series, “Criminal Justice,” and speculation had always swirled about a “Sopranos” movie.
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