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Paul Sorvino Dies: A Softie Who Played Mobsters

TPaul Sorvino’s iconic two images could not be more distinct. In the first, he’s slicing garlic with a razor bladePaulie Cicero, the brutal Paulie. Goodfellas. In the second, he’s weeping inconsolably at the 1996 Academy Awards while his daughter Mira dedicates her newly won Oscar to him.

Sorvino died July 25, aged 83. He was a master at both playing the mobster as the softie and everything else. He was the son of Italian immigrants and had a successful acting career that spanned five decades. Tony Award nomination. The Champion Season in 1973, played Henry Kissinger in Oliver Stone’s Nixon and Lord Capulet in Baz Luhrmann’sRomeo + JulietAnd starred in a season of the show. Law & Order. Mira Sorvino said at the 1996 Oscars that her father “taught me everything I know about acting.”

Although he is perhaps most well-known for his tough roles, Sorvino confessed that he preferred to show his gentler side. “I’m a poet,” he said in 2015. “I’m an opera singer, I’m an author … none of it is gangster.”

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