James Gandolfini Dies At 51 Of A Heart Attack

An autopsy on the body of James Gandolfini, the New Jersey-bred actor whose Mafia-boss character survived six seasons of mob hits and panic attacks on “The Sopranos,” will be performed Thursday, the Associated Press reported.

The man behind Tony Soprano was with his teenage son, Michael, 13, in Italy when he suffered a massive heart attack on Wednesday, a source close to the barrel-chested actor said. He was 51.

Gandolfini and his family had spent “a beautiful day out together,” the actor’s assistant, Tom Richardson, told friend Mike Sullivan on Wednesday.

“When they got back to the hotel, Jimmy went to use the restroom. And something happened in there. ... His sister said he was alive when they took him out in the ambulance on the way to the hospital,” Richardson said, according to Sullivan, a close pal of “Sopranos” actor Tony Sirico.

It was 13-year-old Michael who discovered Gandolfini and called for help, Antonio D'amore, manager of Boscolo Excedra hotel, told NBC.

The news floored Gandolfini’s friends, fellow actors and “Sopranos” co-stars, including Steve Schirripa, who was in a box suite at Yankee Stadium when word reached him by phone. The color drained from Schirripa’s face and uncertainty reigned for a half-hour as he and other “Sopranos” cast members, like Lorraine Bracco and Steve Van Zandt called each other, desperate for details.

“I had to get up and leave,” said Schirripa, who played Tony’s brother-in-law, Bobby Baccalieri. “It was like being told a brother had died. Jimmy Gandolfini was as great a friend as he was an actor and a human being.”

“The phone hasn’t stopped. I spoke to a lot of the guys from ‘The Sopranos.’ We were crying,” Schirripa added. “People joke about us being a family. But we are a family.”

Soon enough, Twitter and Facebook exploded with rumors and contradictory information about Gandolfini’s death, including claims that it was a hoax.

But managers Mark Armstrong and Nancy Sanders confirmed the death in a statement: “It is with immense sorrow that we report our client James Gandolfini passed away today.”

“Our hearts are shattered, and we will miss him deeply.”

The stunning news came almost exactly six years after the gut-wrenching and inconclusive series finale of “The Sopranos.”

Gandolfini was a frequent visitor to Italy, where his parents both grew up. His family owns land near Milan.

It was initially unclear whether the actor had been suffering from health problems before his sudden death. He was in Italy partly to attend the 59th Taormina Film Festival in Sicily.

Gandolfini had been working on a new TV series, “Criminal Justice,” and speculation had always swirled about a “Sopranos” movie.

Film and TV bigs, and other notables, flooded social media with an extraordinary deluge of condolences and praise.

“RIP James Gandolfini!” the prolific Jersey screenwriter Kevin Smith wrote on Twitter. “Your iconic portrayal of mob boss Tony Soprano gave soul to a monster and fostered perverse pride in the Garden State!”

Gandolfini became famous relatively late in his career thanks to his breakout role on “The Sopranos,” and the press-shy celeb had largely avoided the spotlight following the hit HBO show’s final season, in 2007.

The burly native of Westwood, in Bergen County, N.J., had appeared in several supporting roles since then, playing the director of the CIA in “Zero Dark Thirty” and the gruff blue-collar father of a rock star wanna-be in “Not Fade Away.”

Gandolfini hit Broadway in 2009 with the comedy “God of Carnage.”

“I seek out good stories, basically — that’s it,” he told The Star-Ledger of Newark in December. “The older I get, the funnier-looking I get, the more comedies I’m offered. I’m starting to look like a toad, so I’ll probably be getting even more soon.”

Gandolfini’s second wife, former model Deborah Lin, gave birth to a baby girl in October. The couple married in 2008.

Gandolfini — a Rutgers University grad who spent part of his early career supporting himself as a nightclub manager — had his son Michael with his ex-wife, Marcy Wudarski.

His big break came in 1992 when he landed a role in a Broadway version of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” starring Alec Baldwin and Jessica Lange.

Fame arrived in 1999, as “The Sopranos” garnered critical acclaim and cult popularity on its way to becoming a TV classic.

Gandolfini won three Emmy Awards for his sparkling depiction of Tony Soprano, an emotionally tortured mobster who tries to balance the pressures of being a mob boss with the stresses of family life.

The depressed head of the DiMeo crime family ends up in therapy — a no-no for wiseguys — and tells his shrink the story of his life while cooperating with and competing against mobsters from both sides of the Hudson River.


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