The entertainment world is in mourning. On Monday afternoon, July 25, the death of actor Paul Sorvino, known for his work in the successful television series and movies Goodfellas, One of Us, and Law & Order, was reported, according to information released to the media by his agent, Roger Neal.
Sorvino, the father of fellow actress Mira Sorvino, died in Indiana of natural causes.
Who was Paul Sorvino?
In his half-century career, he had specialized in roles as cops and robbers, such as the mobster Paul Cicero in Goodfellas, directed by Martin Scorsese, and Sergeant Phil Cerretta in Law & Order.
He was born in Brooklyn on April 13, 1939, and his first job was in an advertising agency. He made his Broadway debut in 1964 with the musical Bajour, and six years later, he made his big screen debut with Carl Reiner’s Where’s Poppa.
He played former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Oliver Stone’s Nixon and used to say that although he was best known for playing gangsters, his true passions, according to The Washington Post, were poetry, painting, and opera.
As a director, he signed the comedy The Trouble with Cali, starring himself and written by another of his daughters, Amanda, as well as That championship season and a couple of episodes of the TV series That’s Life.
Deadline magazine recalled Monday on its website that he founded the Paul Sorvino Asthma Foundation and wrote with his wife, Dee Dee, whom he married in 2014, the book Pinot, Pasta and Parties.
Sorvino had three children from his first marriage. When Mira won the Oscar in 1996 for best-supporting actress in Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite, the performer claimed he had no words to express how he felt.
“There aren’t any in any language I’ve ever heard. Well, maybe in Italian,” he joked in statements to the Los Angeles Times and picked up again Monday by The Washington Post.
Story originally published in Spanish in Cultura Colectiva News
