Paul Sorvino, the burly character actor who made a career playing tough characters, most notably cold-hearted mobster Paulie Cicero in Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas, has died. He was 83 years old.
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.
Publicist Roger Neal said he died at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.
In a solid career that spanned half a century, Sorvino portrayed James Caan’s bookie in The Gambler (1974), Claire Danes’ pushy father in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet (1996), the Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995) and a 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 made a dream come true 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 four former high school basketball players who reunite to visit their old coach, in the original production of Jason Miller’s That Championship Season Broadway. , winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
He reprized the role for a 1982 film, then played a 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 direct 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 non-fiction book.
In a 2015 New York Times article on the film’s 25th anniversary, Sorvino said he was thrilled to get the role and scared to death.
“I’d done a lot of comedies and dramas, but I’d never done a really tough guy. I never had it in me,” he said. “And this [part] it demanded a lethality, which I felt was far beyond me. I called my manager three days before we started shooting and said, “Get me out.” I’m going to ruin the image of this great man, and I’m going to ruin myself. He, being wise, said, “Call me tomorrow and I’ll get you out if necessary.”
“Then I was going to the mirror in the hall to adjust my tie. I was just inconsolable. And I looked in the mirror and I literally jumped back a foot. I saw a look I’d never seen before, something in my eyes that he alarmed. A soulless death look in my eyes that scared me and was overwhelmingly menacing. And I looked up at the sky and said, ‘You’ve found it.'”
At 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), The Brink’s Job (1978), The Rocketeer (1991) and William Friedkin. The Firm (1993).
“There are a lot of people who think I’m actually a gangster or a mobster, especially because of Goodfellas,” he once said. “I guess that’s the price you pay for being effective in a role.”
It could be a big tender though. When her daughter took the stage to accept her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1996, Sorvino was seen in the audience crying with joy.
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 homemaker and piano teacher. His parents argued frequently, and he spent time living in California with his mother before graduating from Lafayette High School in 1956.
Sorvino said he was always fascinated by 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 asthma attack made him focus on acting.
He attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, studied with Sanford Meisner and William Esper, and made his mark on the stage.
Learning to control asthma with breathing exercises, later founding the Sorvino Children’s Asthma Foundation and writing a 1985 book, How to Become a Former Asthmatic, Sorvino made his Broadway debut as a singing patrolman in the musical Bajour in 1964.
Sorvino first appeared on screen in Carl Reiner’s Where’s Poppa? (1970), then played Joseph Bologna’s father in Made for Each Other (1971), George Segal’s film producer friend in A Touch of Class (1973), and a government agent in The Day of the Dolphin (1973) by Mike Nichols.
In 1975, Sorvino got a crack at television when he played a middle-class New Jersey lawyer on We’ll Get By, a CBS show created by Alan Alda. The comedy, however, lasted only 12 episodes. The following year, he starred as a maverick cop in the Streets of San Francisco spin-off Bert D’Angelo, Superstar. It was canceled after 11 episodes.
Speaking about his one season (1991-92) on Law & Order, Sorvino wasn’t nostalgic. “I felt like I was in the Russian gulag,” he said. “There was absolutely no communication with the writers and producers, and we had to work under the worst conditions.”
He left the show and Logan got a new partner, Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach).
Sorvino also played the cop who sends Al Pacino undercover in Friedkin’s Cruising (1980) and portrayed detectives in I, The Jury (1982) and as the title character in another short-lived CBS show, The Oldest Rookie from 1987-88.
He portrayed Bruce Willis’ father on ABC’s Moonlighting, and with Raymond Burr ill, stepped in to play a visiting lawyer in a 1993 Perry Mason telefilm, The Case of the Wicked Wives.
He also starred with Ellen Burstyn and Kevin Dillon in the 2000-02 CBS drama That’s Life.
Sorvino’s resume also included Oh, God! from Reiner! (1977), Slow Dancing in the Big City (1978), Bloodbrothers (1978), Lost and Found (1979), the 1979 telefilm Dummy, Turk 182! (1985), The Stuff (1985), A Fine Mess (1986), Money Talks (1997), Plan B (2001), Perfume (2001), Mr. 3000 (2004) and The Bronx Bull (2016).
Most recently, he played Frank Costello in the Epix series Godfather of Harlem.
In a 1995 interview with Charlie Rose, Sorvino lamented that he was never given the opportunity to carry a studio picture. “I’ve been to the top of the mountain, but I haven’t been the guy,” he said. “I’ve been a passenger on the bus, but I haven’t been the driver.”
Sorvino sang the role of Alfred in Die Fledermaus with the Seattle Opera Company in 1981 and years later starred in a revival of The Most Happy Fella at Lincoln Center. He also recorded three CDs.
Sorvino married his third wife, Dee Dee Benkie, a Republican strategist and former aide to President George W. Bush, in 2014. They had met on Fox News Channel’s Your World With Neil Cavuto.
He had dealt with health problems in recent years, he said, and will be buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Survivors include her other children, Amanda and Michael, and five grandchildren.