Paul Sorvino

Paul Sorvino, the cop and crook of the silver screen best known for his roles in projects such as “Goodfellas” and “Law & Order,” died Monday at 83.

He once told the New York Times that he thought of himself “as a warrior-poet.” “Then I was going to fix my tie and I saw this guy,” Sorvino said of his own reflection in the mirror, surprising himself with his own lethal gaze. He starred alongside Al Pacino in “The Panic in Needle Park,” James Caan in “The Gambler,” and worked with Carl Reiner on “Where’s Poppa” and “Oh, God!.” Working consistently through the ’80s, Sorvino once again hit stardom with his role as Henry Kissinger in “Nixon” in 1995 and Fulgencio Capulet in Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet.” “Our hearts are broken,” Dee Dee Sorvino said in a statement. For his part, Sorvino didn’t see himself quite that way. Throughout his career, the Brooklyn native was an imposing presence on film and stage.

US actor Paul Sorvino, best known for playing Paulie Cicero in the 1990 mobster classic Goodfellas, has died at age 83. Roger Neal, his publicist, ...

He was the most wonderful father." "Because if not, he has to meet me, and I will kill [him]," he said. Sorvino acted in more than 50 films and dozens of TV shows.

The character actor - and father of Academy Award-winning actor Mira Sorvino - was 83.

He was proud of his daughter and cried when she won the best supporting actress Oscar for Mighty Aphrodite in 1996. He'd be in a wheelchair". "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.

Sorvino was a mainstay in film and television, having worked for over 50 years in the entertainment business.

But he wanted to be seen for more than what he was on screen and took particular pride in his singing. He was proud of his daughter and cried when she won the best supporting actress Oscar for Mighty Aphrodite in 1996. She was by his side when he died. “The reality is I’m a sculptor, a painter, a best-selling author, many, many things - a poet, an opera singer, but none of them is gangster.... Born in Brooklyn in 1939 to a mother who taught piano and father who was a foreman in a robe factory, Sorvino was musically inclined from a young age and attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York where he fell for the theatre. In 1996, Paul Sorvino: An Evening of Song was broadcast on television as a part of a PBS fundraising campaign. We all cried.” Rob Reiner, who appeared in one of his father’s films with Sorvino, said he was sending love. Where have all the tenors gone?” He’d be in a wheelchair.” With his 6-foot-4-inch stature, Sorvino made an impactful presence no matter the medium. In 2014, he married political pundit Dee Dee Benkie and said that a goal of his later life was to “disabuse people of the notion that I’m a slow-moving, heavy-lidded thug.” My heart is rent asunder- a life of love and joy and wisdom with him is over.

The actor may be best known for “Goodfellas,” but he almost bailed on it because the character of the underboss Paulie Cicero was so difficult to pin down.

Sorvino is also memorable as Edelson, the commanding officer of the undercover cop Burns (Al Pacino) in William Friedkin’s “Cruising” (from 1980; rent or buy on major platforms). Assigning his underling to work the gay sex-club underworld of Manhattan in search of a killer, Edelson inquires into Burns’s sexual history with the most blunt question imaginable, not batting an eyelash. For another taste of the more voluble Sorvino, his turn as Curtis Mahoney, a federal agent posing as an investigative journalist in Mike Nichols’s much-maligned 1974 “The Day of the Dolphin” (available on Kino Now), is worth looking into. Later, overseeing elaborate dinners in prison, he has a special system for slicing garlic, and once his cellmate Henry (Liotta) enters bearing wine and Scotch, he proclaims, “Now we can eat.” Presiding over a celebration of Henry’s release from the joint, he’s Uncle Paulie. Henry and his merry men are either paying tribute to Paulie with a percentage of their ill-gotten gains or lying to his face. In the first place, he was a proud Italian American. A connoisseur of Italian culture, particularly food and music, he was not inclined to play a Mafioso. In addition, Sorvino, who died Monday at 83, was a voluble guy, and he liked playing voluble guys. Sorvino’s vision of Paulie was an incredibly nuanced portrayal of a man who, on the page, comes across as simple and as unpleasant as sudden death. Just don’t do it.” Without losing any of the character’s outer-borough intonations, Sorvino clips the words like he’s snapping necks. Much of “Goodfellas” (streaming on HBO Max) is devoted to how three underlings, played by Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro, did not stay in line. Vario, then, was a middle manager of mayhem. He scoffed at the idea of “choices,” insisting: “I found the guy and the guy made the choices.” Much is made in the early scenes of the movie about how most of the criminal’s directives were executed with a mere nod. When Paul Sorvino was offered the role of Paulie Cicero, the Queens-based mob underboss in Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” (1990), he very much did not want to accept it.

Actor Paul Sorvino died Monday. He was known for his role as Paulie in Martin Scorcese's gangster epic, "Goodfellas." He was 83 years old.

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A would-be singing star, he found success in Hollywood playing a variety of roles, but they were often quiet, dangerous men, like Paulie Cicero in ...

he was George Segal’s movie-producer friend in “A Touch of Class” and a mysterious government agent in “The Day of the Dolphin.” Mr. Sorvino later played an egotistic, money-hungry evangelist with a Southern accent in the comedy “ Oh, God!” (1977) and God Himself in “The Devil’s Carnival” (2012) and its 2015 sequel. Most recently, in 2018, when the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was on trial for criminal sexual acts — and Mira Sorvino had accused him of harassment — Mr. Sorvino predicted that Mr. Weinstein would die in jail. “Because if not, he has to meet me, and I will kill the [expletive deleted] — real simple,” Mr. Sorvino said in a widely aired video interview. He appeared next as a New Yorker robbed by a prostitute in “The Panic in Needle Park” (1972) but did not fall victim to the cops-and-gangsters stereotype right away. But in a half-century screen career, Mr. Sovino’s characters were often on the wrong side of the law. “Most of the time I was just another out-of-work actor who couldn’t get arrested,” he told The New York Times in 1972. The elder Mr. Sorvino, a robe-factory foreman, was born in Naples, Italy, and emigrated to New York with his parents in 1907. He made his film debut in “ Where’s Poppa?” (1970), a dark comedy directed by Carl Reiner, in a small role as a retirement-home owner. He had made his mark onstage 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 are decades past. In the late 1950s, he began performing at Catskills resorts and charity events. That didn’t happen, he recalled, until one day when he was adjusting his necktie, looked in the mirror and saw something in his own eyes.

The 'Goodfellas' star gets emotional over his daughter's tribute in a clip that's resurfaced following his death this week.

After his passing, Mira paid tribute to Paul—who is also father to her siblings Michael and Amanda—on Twitter. “My father the great Paul Sorvino has passed. When asked about Weinstein’s alleged abuse of his daughter, Paul didn’t mince words, telling TMZ in 2018, “He’s going to go to jail. In the years following her win, Mira has been open about being blacklisted by Harvey Weinstein after she rejected his sexual advances.

Her acceptance speech produced one of the most indelibly emotional Oscar moments. “When you give me this award,” she said in her acceptance speech, “you honor ...

“Slow Dancing” aside, Sorvino did lament in interviews that he never got to carry a feature film, but his was a singular career. My favorite scene in Sydney Pollack’s “The Firm” that does not include Holly Hunter was Sorvino’s late-in-the-film appearance as a mobster who is unexpectedly visited by the very lawyer he wants to get his “f**kin’ hands on.” His looks-could-kill glare at Tom Cruise speaks volumes. Better a Sorvino binge to truly appreciate the breadth and depth of the eclectic characters he embodied. The tweets issued following news of his passing speak to the esteem in which he is held by other character actors. Sorvino’s 60-year career (he made his Broadway debut in 1964 as a member of the chorus in Bajour), spanned theater, movies, and television. Just one year before he made his Tony nominated breakthrough as a morally-challenged millionaire in Jason Miller’s play, That Championship Season, he was making commercials for Arrid deodorant and Hunt’s Tomato Sauce, according to a 1972 New York Times profile written by Patricia Bosworth. I’m going to ruin this great man’s picture, and I’m going to ruin myself.' Then I was going by the hall mirror to adjust my tie. “"He ought to hope that he goes to jail,” he said coolly. In 1996, Mira Sorvino was the recipient of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Woody Allen’s “ Mighty Aphrodite.” Her acceptance speech produced one of the most indelibly emotional Oscar moments. “Goodfellas” would have been my go-to movie to watch in his honor had I not re-watched it just last May following star Ray Liotta’s death. A deadly soulless look in my eyes ... And I looked to the heavens and said, 'You’ve found it.'" And I looked in the mirror and literally jumped back a foot.

Forget the horse's head. Forget “I know it was you, Fredo”. The most gangster moment in gangster film history came from Paul Sorvino in Goodfellas.

There is a great contrast to the scene in Goodfella's final act when Hill unravels over the course of a manic, paranoid day in which he tries to not just offload stolen silencers, pick up his brother and cut some drugs but timing the preparation of an intricate family meal. And just like the code of omertà that – in theory at least – helps keep them out of jail, food preparation is ritualistic and follows strict rules. That’s why the razor blade is so memorable: it represents discipline, care and the correct way of doing things. “Paulie did the prep-work," Hill tells us, "and he had this wonderful system for doing the garlic. Forget mob bosses getting whacked to "House of the Rising Sun" in Casino, or Robert De Niro’s Al Capone delivering an ode to baseball in The Untouchables. Forget, even, the FBI agents discussing the meaning of ‘fuggedaboutit in Donny Brasco. If you're looking for an iconic mafia movie scene, one that encapsulates everything that is great about the genre and why we love it, none holds a candle – or, for that matter, a razor blade – to Goodfella’s prison dinner scene. Red and white wine.

Sure, Martin Scorsese's stone-cold classic from 1990 might be Sorvino's most memorable performance, but spending all one's words on just that one film (no ...

Sorvino was an actor of physical and heft and command. I also have a soft spot for I, The Jury, one of the sleaziest neo-noirs from that decade (which is really saying something), in which he played across from an overheated Armand Assante as Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, and a frequently underclothed Barbara Carrera. It ain’t art, but it surely is something. Sydney Pollack used his recent GoodFellas mobster past to excellent effect in a cameo near the end of the Tom Cruise blockbuster, The Firm. I also dearly loved his work as Henry Kissinger in Oliver Stone’s Nixon, in which he played the polarizing former secretary of state as if he were born in the man’s shoes. Sorvino became a quick staple of the auteur era of the ‘70s, turning up in such notable films as The Panic in Needle Park, A Touch of Class, The Gambler, Oh God!, and Bloodbrothers. The last of those films is my first memory of him. One of the gifts that I thought Sorvino had in great abundance was the ability to go from charming to threatening. Where does one even begin with Paul Sorvino? Leaning into GoodFellas is the most obvious point of entry, yet how can we ignore the fact that the man’s career covered six decades and a whopping 172 credits?

Tributes have been pouring in to honor the late actor Paul Sorvino. "My heart is rent asunder -- a life of love and joy and wisdom with him is over," said ...

about his "Lost Cat Corona" co-star. God bless you," tweeted Arquette "He was the most wonderful father.