Paul Sorvino, the Tony-nominated actor who played mobster Paulie Cicero in Goodfellas, has died at age 83. Sorvino, the father of actor Mira Sorvino, died of natural causes on Monday, 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 in a statement published by the Hollywood Reporter.
The Brooklyn native’s career spanned over a half century, with memorable roles as James Caan’s bookie in The Gambler, secretary of state Henry Kissinger in Oliver Stone’s Nixon, Claire Danes’s father in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, and a heroin-addicted lounge singer alongside Alec Baldwin in The Cooler.
He was nominated for a Tony award in 1973 for his performance as Phil Romano, one of four former high school basketball players who visit their old coach, in the Pulitzer-winning Broadway production of Jason Miller’s That Championship Season.
Sorvino also worked with actor-director Warren Beatty over several decades – as the founder of the American Communist party in Reds and in Dick Tracy, Bulworth and Rules Don’t Apply.
Sorvino was born in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn in 1939, the son of an Italian immigrant father who worked in a robe factory and a homemaker mother, also a piano teacher. He dreamed of becoming an opera singer, performing first in hotels in the Catskills, but problems with asthma made him focus on acting.
He attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy under Stanford Meisner and William Esper, and made his Broadway debut as a singing patrolman in the comedy Bajour in 1964. He appeared on film for the first time in Carl Reiner’s Where’s Poppa? in 1970.
Sorvino’s résumé also included one season as Chris Noth’s partner on Law & Order, the CBS dramedy That’s Life, The Panic in Needle Park, The Day of the Dolphin, The Rocketeer, The Firm, Mr 3000 and The Bronx Bull.
Sorvino is survived by his third wife, Dee Dee, whom he met after they both appeared on Fox News’s Your World with Neil Cavuto and married in 2014, as well as his children Mira, Amanda and Michael and several grandchildren.
