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Tony Sirico (right) with "Sopranos" co-star Steve Van Zandt: The Golden Age of Television
Photo: ddp images / ddp
What is life, what is invention?
The stories ex-mob henchman Tony Sirico told about his life often trumped those he portrayed as mob henchman Paulie Walnuts experienced in The Sopranos.
In an early interview, Sirico, who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, shared his life story - a never-ending series of fights, cons and robberies in the Colombo clan's sphere of influence.
The most brutal part, however, was about love: Tony Sirico was obsessed with a "girl" at a young age, for whom he left his wife and child.
When he was alone with her, he was a little lamb.
If another man was standing nearby, he freaked out.
He first beat up a sailor who had spoken to his lover in a bar and then threw him over the quay wall.
His girlfriend kissed and hugged him for it, and they both escaped in a taxi.
It is not known whether the sailor survived.
The violence may have been unleashed by the young woman, but, as Sirico says in the interview, she was always inside him.
He can't explain why either.
It was the big question mark that probably also drove him later in his work as an actor.
The violence seemed inexhaustible
Tony Sirico was imprisoned several times in the late 1960s and early 1970s, not for the allegedly beaten and sunk sailor, but for a number of other crimes.
From there he also brought the most important signature move for his film character Peter Paul Gualtieri, called Paulie Walnuts, to the HBO series »The Sopranos«, which started in 1999: the hands held in front of the stomach, which alertly pummel each other.
A prisoner's habit to be able to quickly initiate defensive measures in the event of an unexpected knife attack.
Sirico starred alongside James Gandolfini, who played the self-doubting New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano.
As Paulie Walnuts, he wore hand-sewn two-tone leather shoes and elegant white sportswear that made every Brioni three-piece suit look like a rag outfit.
A heavy crucifix adorned the graying hair on his chest.
In the interview mentioned, Sirico was also asked if he believed in God.
His answer: someone must have been there to take care of him, otherwise he would have been dead long ago.
It was this self-confidence that distinguished his Paulie Walnuts from Tony Soprano.
While Gandolfini's godfather, in pinching jogging suits, carried all the self-doubt about his murderous actions like a walking seared salsiccia, sidekick Walnuts was always identical to himself and the violent deeds demanded of him: his character never showed the slightest self-doubt.
Often people were sunk by him in water bodies and on garbage dumps.
This character's potential for violence seemed inexhaustible;
the fact that you remained loyal to her for six seasons was probably also due to the passion and the (occasionally very fragile) loyalty with which he committed the slaughter for his pitiful boss.
The Sopranos was one of the first major serial stories of what has been called the new golden age of television.
The pay-TV broadcaster HBO, which later brought out the global mega hit of this era with »Game of Thrones«, set the pace for this development.
Character profiles, which often remained one-dimensional in the past, developed new facets over a long period of time.
This also applied to Sirico's Walnuts, which developed a complex, psychologically driven life of its own behind the violent façade.
The worst fear: loss of meaning and identity.
Sirico's performances have always been a search for the origins of Italian-American machismo.
The Eternal Godfather
In an early scene in the first season of "Sopranos," Paulie Walnuts walks into a major US coffeehouse chain and groans with a disgusted face that the corporate asses stole her Italian coffee culture.
Clearly an early case of what we now call cultural appropriation!
In the end, Sirico's entire work was a fight against such cultural appropriations: If a film production needs an Italian-born jailbird, then the Italian jailbird can play him himself and not some Hollywood actor with an accent and fake chest hair.
Sirico had already taken part in the theater group while in prison.
After his final release from prison, he landed minor roles in film and television.
He had his first major appearance in 1977 in James Toback's »Fingers« alongside the young Harvey Keitel.
Sirico's part, of course: Mafia godfather.
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After that, he varied the profile of the violent Italian-American in countless films.
His characters had names like Tommy Gambino, Ricky Valentino or Toy Torillo.
He was seen in Martin Scorsese's gangster epic Goodfellas (1990) as well as in Woody Allen's 1920s homage Bullets over Broadway (1994).
Mostly he played the mobster with incredible energy, sometimes bordering on caricature.
The "Sopranos" were Sirico's salvation, so as not to end up as a constant riot clown in small roles.
Actually he should play a less important role, but after the first test shots the series creator David Chase built him the central character of Paulie Walnuts.
Sirico recalls the offer: "I said, 'Who's that guy supposed to be?' David said, 'You're going to like him.' And boy, I'm telling you, I loved him.
I'll be Paulie until I die."
The man who was Paulie Walnuts spent his final years in a nursing home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
He died there on Friday morning in the presence of his family;
this month he would have celebrated his 80th birthday.
The family has scheduled a large public memorial service for Wednesday at the Regina Pacis Basilica in Brooklyn.
Where the real Tony Sirico called home.
