‘Goodfellas,’ Law & Order’ Actor Was 83 – The Hollywood Reporter

Paul Sorvino, the burly character actor who made a career out of playing forceful types, most notably the coldhearted mobster Paulie Cicero in Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas, has died. He was 83.

Sorvino, the father of Oscar-winning actress Mira Sorvino (Mighty Aphrodite), died Monday of natural causes, his wife, Dee Dee, announced.

“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,” she said.

Wrote Mira on Twitter: “My heart is rent asunder — a life of love and joy and wisdom with him is over. He was the most wonderful father. I love him so much. I’m sending you love in the stars Dad as you ascend.”

Publicist Roger Neal said he died at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.

During a solid career that spanned a half-century, Sorvino portrayed James Caan’s bookie inThe Gambler (1974), Claire Danes’ pushy father in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet (1996), Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995) and a strung-out heroin addict in The Cooler (2003).

He played a founder of the American Communist Party in Warren Beatty’s Reds (1981) and worked alongside the actor-director again in Dick Tracy (1990), Bulworth (1998) and Rules Don’t Apply (2016).

A respected tenor who realized a dream when he performed for the New York Opera at Lincoln Center in 2006, the Brooklyn native also starred for a season as Det. Phil Cerretta, the partner of Chris Noth’s Det. Mike Logan, on NBC’s Law & Order.

In 1973, Sorvino received a Tony nomination and a Drama Desk Award for his performance as the unscrupulous Phil Romano — one of the four former high school basketball players who reunite to visit their old coach — in the original Broadway production of Jason Miller’s That Championship Season, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

He reprised the role for a 1982 film, then played the coach in a 1999 Showtime telefilm for which he also made his directorial debut. He returned to Scranton, Pennsylvania, the setting of That Championship Season, to star in and helm his only feature, The Trouble With Cali (2012).

Still, Sorvino is probably best known for his turn as Cicero, who loved a good meal and sliced his garlic with a razor blade, in the ultra-violent GoodFellas (1990), which Nicholas Pileggi and Scorsese adapted from Pileggi’s 1986 nonfiction book.

In a 2015 New York Times piece on the 25th anniversary of the movie, Sorvino said he was overjoyed to get the part — and scared to death.

“I’d done a lot of comedies as well as dramas, but I’d never done a really tough guy. I never had it in me,” he said. “And this [part] called for a lethality, which I felt was way beyond me. I called my manager three days before we started shooting and said, ‘Get me out. I’m going to ruin this great man’s picture, and I’m going to ruin myself.’ He, being wise, said, ‘Call me tomorrow, and if necessary I will get you out.’

“Then I was going by the hall mirror to adjust my tie. I was just inconsolable. And I looked in the mirror and literally jumped back a foot. I saw a look I’d never seen, something in my eyes that alarmed me. A deadly soulless look in my eyes that scared me and was overwhelmingly threatening. And I looked to the heavens and said, ‘You’ve found it.’ “

A commanding 6-foot-3 and 240 pounds in his prime, Sorvino also played men on the wrong side of the law in The Panic in Needle Park (1971), William Friedkin’s The Brink’s Job (1978), The Rocketeer (1991) and The Firm (1993).

“There are many people who think I’m actually a gangster or a mafioso, largely because of Goodfellas,” he once said. “I suppose that’s the price you pay for being effective in a role.”

He could be a big softie, though. When his daughter took the stage to accept her best supporting actress Oscar in 1996, Sorvino was seen in the audience, weeping joyfully.

My father the great Paul Sorvino has passed. My heart is rent asunder- a life of love and joy and wisdom with him is over. He was the most wonderful father. I love him so much. I’m sending you love in the stars Dad as you ascend.

— Mira Sorvino (@MiraSorvino) July 25, 2022

Sorvino was born on April 13, 1939, in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. His father was an Italian immigrant who worked in a robe factory, and his mother was a housewife and piano teacher. His parents argued frequently, and he spent time living in California with his mom before graduating from Lafayette High School in 1956.

Sorvino said he was always fascinated with the human voice and sang in Catskills hotels as a teenager. He took lesson after lesson and dreamed of becoming an opera singer, but an affliction with asthma made him focus on acting.

He attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, studied with Sanford Meisner and William Esper and cut his chops on the…