MUMBAI: The 51 year old James Gandolfini, best known for his role on the HBO drama The Sopranos as Tony Soprano, passed away on Wednesday, 19 June while on his vacation in Italy. His sudden death has sent a shock wave across millions of his fans as friends and colleagues tweeted and made statements after hearing news of the actor‘s death.
Gandolfini‘s death was confirmed by HBO. He was vacationing in Rome, and was scheduled to attend the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily this week. The exact cause of death is not known, but his managers said it was possibly a heart attack.
Gandolfini, the Emmy Award-winning actor who grew up in Park Ridge, in Bergen County, N.J., played a cold and curt crime boss with an anxiety ridden exterior but a rich interior life in The Sopranos. The television drama that made its debut in 1999 and ran for six seasons on HBO revolved around his struggle to balance his family life and career in the Mafia. His other roles include the woman-beating mob henchman Virgil inTrue Romance, enforcer/stuntman Bear in Get Shorty, and the impulsive Wild Thing Carol in Where the Wild Things Are.
