Paul Sorvino is an imposing actor that specialized in portraying cops such as Paulie Zicero and crooks. GoodfellasAnd the NYPD Sergeant Phil Cerretta Law & OrderHas died. He was 83.
Roger Neal, his publicist, stated that he had died on Monday in Indiana from natural causes.
“Our hearts are broken, there will never be another Paul Sorvino, he was the love of my life, and one of the greatest performers to ever grace the screen and stage,” his wife, Dee Dee Sorvino, said in a statement.
In his over 50 years in the entertainment business, Sorvino was a mainstay in films and television, playing an Italian American communist in Warren Beatty’s Reds, Henry Kissinger in Oliver Stone’s NixonEddie Valentine, mob boss Eddie Valentine The Rocketeer. His true passions were painting, poetry and opera.
He was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1939 to a piano-playing mother and a father who worked in a robe manufacturing plant. In 1964, he made his Broadway debut. Bajour and his film debut in Carl Reiner’s Where’s Poppa?In 1970.
Sorvino, at 6’4″ tall and 4 1/2 inches in height was an impressive presence regardless of the medium. He acted in the film Al Pacino’s 1970 movie, “The Last Stand.” Panic in Needle ParkJames Caan and in The GamblerReiner and he teamed up again in Oh, God! and was among the ensemble in William Friedkin’s bank robbery comedy The Brink’s Job. In John G. Avildsen’s Rocky follow-up Slow Dancing In The Big CitySorvino was able to portray a romantic role and also use his ballet training alongside professional ballerina Anne Ditchburn.
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He was especially prolific in the 1990s, kicking off the decade playing Lips in Beatty’s Dick Tracy and Paul Cicero in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, who was based on the real-life mobster Paul Vario, and 31 episodes on Dick Wolf’s Law & Order. He followed roles played by others. The Rocketeer, The Firm Nixon, which got him a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination, and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet as Juliet’s father, Fulgencio Capulet. Beatty would return to Sorvino for political satire and often enlist him. Bulworth“, released 1998 and his love letter to Hollywood in 2016 Rules Don’t Apply. He also appeared in James Gray’s The Immigrant.
Mira Sorvino is an Academy Award-winning actor and Sorvino’s first wife had three children. Also, he directed and starred with his son Michael Sorvino in a movie written and directed by Amanda Sorvino.
When he learned that Mira Sorvino had been among the women allegedly sexually harassed and blacklisted by Harvey Weinstein in the midst of the #MeToo reckoning, he told TMZ that if he had known, Weinstein, “Would not be walking. He’d be in a wheelchair.”
His daughter was his pride and joy. He cried when her Oscar win for best supporting actor. Mighty AphroditeIn 1996. He spoke to the Los Angeles Times that night that he didn’t have the words to express how he felt.
“They don’t exist in any language that I’ve ever heard—well, maybe Italian,” he said.
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