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"FacebookPinterest\n\n1. He pulls up on his  Harley. I watch as he  awkwardly backs the small bike  to the curb outside the Ear Inn  and lifts off his helmet. James  Gandolfini arrived back in New  York City at seven thirty this  evening after his Emmy  weekend in Los Angeles; he put  his 5-year-old son to bed, then  headed out, only slightly late  for his interview. He does very  few of these. He has not always  had an easy time with the  public side of the fame The Sopranos has brought  him\u2014all those nosy questions,  those pesky paparazzi, the  peculiar moments when a  person will come up to you as  you are vomiting at the  curbside outside a Tennessee  airport to ask whether you'd  mind his taking a picture. But  nor does he have much  patience with the sound of  someone like him complaining  about such things. In the past,  when he has spoken, he has  sometimes replied to  questions by protesting that  he is boring. Maybe he believes that this is the case, or just  believes there is no point in  allowing himself to seem  interesting in the way  interviewers usually want  people to be. Still, he has  told himself that tonight he  will be truthful. He's feeling  calmer these days. He has not  had one of these conversations  for a while, and he intends  it to be a long time before he  has another.\n\nHe chose to ride the Harley  because he wasn't going far.  He also has a scooter he uses to  get through the traffic when  heading farther uptown. \"I  catch a lot of grief because of  the scooter,\" he explains as  he takes his seat in the back  corner of the cramped  restaurant. \"A friend told me I  look like Shrek...this huge  thing on this little thing.\"\n\n2. James Gandolfini  is currently enjoying his  longest break from playing  Tony Soprano since he first  began wearing the shoes of  the most mesmerizing  character on modern TV. If  Gandolfini fully realized what  he has achieved as Tony  Soprano, then he wouldn't be  quite the man he seems to be.  Over five seasons, with great  grace and even greater  exquisite clumsiness, he has  allowed us to see a little of  what we should be, a lot  of what we shouldn't be, and  much too much of what we  are\u2014all this without seeming  to be showing us anything at  all. We can celebrate this grand  achievement only a little  while longer. The sixth and  supposedly final season doesn't  begin shooting until April.  \"Some days you wish you could  just kind of get it over with,\"  he says. \"Just get in there and  get it done.\"\n\nI ask Gandolfini whether this  is definitely the last season.\n\n\"I believe so,\" he says, and  immediately adds,\"I hope so.\"  Then, just as quickly, he  retreats. \"I shouldn't put it that  distinctly. But I'm ready to go,  I think. I've done this now from  probably the age of 34 to 43.  And that's enough.\"\n\nI ask him what it is he has  had enough of.\n\n\"I think some of his flaws are  my flaws,\" he says of Tony. \"And  so you try to get away from  them, and then you kind of get  pulled in a little bit by playing  them.\" A man like James Gandolfini is hardly likely to list the particular flaws he  refers to, but it is fairly clear he  is not alluding to an unshakable  itch to commit murder or a  fondness for extortion. It may  be wiser to look at some of  Tony Soprano's more universal  character traits and  predicaments, to some part of  the cocktail of fury and  indulgence and love and lust  and depression that taunts  many of us. \"It's a hard head to  get into sometimes. I have a lot  of fun at work, too, don't get  me wrong. I love the people I  work with. But there are some  days when you get to work  and you're not angry enough,  and you have to kind of get  angrier, and that's a little...\" He  trails off. \"When I was younger,  it was\"\u2014he explains, grinning\u2014  \"much more accessible.\"\n\nIf there is a new calmness  about him, he largely credits it  to one thing: \"My son,\" he  says. \"And realizing that going  around swearing and acting  like an idiot is not good for  anyone involved. As you get  older, you realize that all that  wind signifying nothing is silly  sometimes.\" He describes the  \"wonderful summer\" he spent  at the Jersey Shore with his  son. \"We spent a lot of time on  the beach doing nothing,\"  he says. \"We dig holes and get  our feet wet.\"\n\nTo me, he recommends the  burgers but then tells the  waitress he wants whatever  grilled fish the couple at the  next table are eating. These,  too, are small concessions to  this time in his life\u2014he tries to  do a little less drinking these  days and to eat a little bit  better. \"I ran my body pretty  hard for a long time,\" he says,  \"and I'm wondering if all of a  sudden I'm going to get nailed  in the next couple of years, so I  want to take care of myself a  wee bit better.\"\n\nWhen I ask him something  moronic about this newfound  preference for grilled fish, he  erupts with polite exasperation,  the way he will whenever  anything seems too personal or  embarrassing or disrespectful  or trivial. \"Oh, who gives a fuck  about any of this?\" he asks  cheerfully, but in a way\u2014his  eyes fixing on you, then darting  about as the muscles around  his mouth move through a  repertoire of expressions\u2014that  unavoidably reminds you of Tony Soprano. \"Seriously?\"\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n3. I had expected there  might be awkward moments  in our conversation, so I  employ the occasional piece  of preplanned strategy.\n\nEarly in our conversation,  I throw out a question. At best  it's a gentle invitation to talk.\n\n\"What's a typical day like?\"  Gandolfini gently rolls his  eyes. \"There is no typical day,  and it's boring anyway. Next.\"\n\nI point out that this wasn't  actually a question of my own.  It is taken from an Interview magazine article about  his Sopranos costar Lorraine  Bracco\u2014an interview  conducted by James Gandolfini.\n\nHe shakes his head, slightly  amused. \"I think I was actually  very hungover and I was like,  'What do I ask you? I have no  idea.' \" He nods. \"That was a  bad question. Glad you threw it  back at me.\"\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n4. James Gandolfini's  first high-profile interview long  preceded any of the recent  events that have made him  famous. It was for a May 1988  New York Times article  about itinerant Manhattan  youths,\"The Apartment  Gypsies of Manhattan\":\n\nThen there is Jim Gandolfini,  who seems to thrive on the  apartment-hopping life. Since  moving to New York City  four years ago, Mr. Gandolfini,  26 years old, has never had  his name on a lease, never paid  more than $400 a month in  rent and never lived in one place  more than 10 months. His  wanderer's existence has given  him sojourns, some as brief  as two months, in Hoboken, N.J.;  Astoria, Queens; Clinton  and the Upper West Side of  Manhattan; and Park Slope and  Flatbush in Brooklyn.\n\n\"Moving, to me, is no big  deal,\" said Mr. Gandolfini, whose  calling is the theater but  whose living comes mostly from  bartending and construction.  \"I have a system down. I throw  everything in plastic garbage  bags and can be situated in my  new place in minutes. Without  my name on a lease, I'm in and out. I have no responsibilities.\" \n\nHe still lives alone in the city, but with  firmer roots. \"I'd have to move a lot of  crap,\" he says.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n5. Recently, James Gandolfini was  inducted into the Hall of Distinguished  Alumni at Rutgers University. He went with  his old friend, the chef Mario Batali, with  whom he'd get drunk and make pasta in  their college days. \"So the two of us were  inducted after a microbiologist, someone  who invented the patch for nicotine...ten of  these people, and then it was us, so I was  like, 'Well, here's Heckle and Jeckle at the  end.' It was nice, you know. I said, 'To be  honest, I haven't a clue how I graduated  from here, but thank you\u2014I met a lot of  intelligent people that are still my friends,  and I had a ball.' \"\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n After college Gandolfini headed for New  York, where he answered an ad and was  made manager of a nightclub, Private Eyes.  He was 21. \"All kinds, straight, gay,\" he  remembers. \"It was the first nightclub that  had videos. The Cars. Duran Duran. I was  way too young, but I tried to act like I knew  what I was doing, and I had no fucking  clue.\" The first weekend, he ordered enough  beer for six months, but after a while he  found his feet and stayed for a few years.\n\nThe world of the night was one he readily  embraced.\"I got drunk, I got laid, I had fun,\"  he says.\"I saw a lot of stuff and didn't have  to wake up at six thirty in the morning.\"\n\nIn the years after that, he did whatever  he needed to\u2014some bartending, some  bouncing, some delivery work, some  landscaping, some furniture moving. He  sold books on the Manhattan streets.\n\nHe'd taken the odd acting class over the  years, but he was in his midtwenties before  he found a good class and stuck with it.  Acting was something he just felt drawn to.  His first paid acting job was touring  Scandinavia in a production of A Streetcar  Named Desire. Then he appeared in a New  York play as a man deprogramming women  obsessed with Elvis Presley. His big break  was again in A Streetcar Named Desire, this  time on Broadway, playing Steve.\n\nOne evening early in his career, just as  he was having his first small successes in  the theater, he was sitting at the family  dinner table with his parents and sisters.  He floated the subject of whether it would  be prudent for him to change his name for  their sake. \"I said, 'If I get famous, it could  be a pain in the ass, ' \" he remembers. \"'If I  make it in any way as an actor, people will  know, and if I do something stupid, people  will know.'\" (He hadn't given much  thought to what he would use as a  replacement for Gandolfini. \"James\u2014I don't know what,\" he  says. \"Leather?\" James Leather? \"I don't  know. I knew someone called that once\u2014  Charles Leather.\")\n\nHis family appeared to be listening  seriously and considering his suggestion.  \"And,\" he says,\"I got up to go to the  bathroom, and apparently my sisters and  my mother and my father were laughing  hysterically about what a jerk-off I was to  think that I was actually going to ever  succeed at all.\" He shrugs. \"So that's my  family, you know?\"\n\nI ask him whether this ever gets  mentioned now in family discussions.\n\n\"Yeah, occasionally,\" he says. \"My sisters  are now slightly humbled by it. Good.\"\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n6. Though James Gandolfini  appeared just away from the center of  attention in many movies before  The Sopranos took off, it is perhaps a  compliment to his acting abilities if you  don't recall his roles in True Romance, Crimson Tide, 8MM, Get Shorty, and Night Falls on Manhattan. He has even filmed a  few movies during the show's run\u2014The Mexican, The Last Castle, The Man Who  Wasn't There, this fall's Surviving Christmas, the forthcoming Romance and  Cigarettes\u2014though he may feel the need  to shake off Tony Soprano before he can  truly show what else he can do.\n\nI ask him: Why do you think you act?\n\n\"To maybe vomit my emotions out of  me,\" he says, an answer both flip and  serious. He smiles. \"Am I making this hard  for you?\" he asks. And he offers a more  considered reply: \"I think I feel a lot. I  never wanted to do business or anything.  People interest me, and the way things  affect them. And I also have a big healthy  affinity for the middle class and the blue-collar, and I don't like the way they're  treated, and I don't like the way the  government is treating them now. I have a  good healthy dose of anger about all of that.  And I think that if I kept it in, it wouldn't  have been very good. I would have been  fired a lot. So I found this silly way of living  that allows me to occasionally stand up for  them a little bit. And mostly make some  good money and act like a silly fool.\"\n\n Gandolfini\u2014who will vote for John  Kerry in November\u2014offers examples:  health care, the removal of sports from  many Oregon schools, corporate tax  avoidance. \"The money that goes to these  islands offshore!\" he exclaims. \"I paid  more tas than Enron one year\u2014what  the fuck is that about?\"\n\n He doesn't find too many of the stories  he would like to be part of coming his way.  \"There's a lot of things that don't have  anything to say,\" he says. \"Just stories  about nothing, that don't signify anything.  A lot of things. Too violent.\"\n\nI point out that some people would be  surprised he would turn down movies for  being too violent, given that they may have  seen few things more violent than some of  what they've seen on The Sopranos.\n\n\"But it's violence with a consequence,\" he  replies.\" There's violence and violence. You  know, some people complain that the rape of  Jennifer Melfi was so violent and horrifying...Well, it's a rape. I think by  definition it's violent and horrifying. If  you're going to portray it, portray it. We  certainly don't glorify the violence, and we  show them suffering. I don't think these  people are having a ball, if you really watch  the show. They're not the happiest people on  earth. The characters, there's a lot of pain  that comes from different ways in it. It's hard  to win with that battle, because if you're too  violent, people say you're too violent, and if you're not violent, people say you're making  them into cuddly teddy bears. But I think the  violence there is justified. I think  occasionally it's been a little ridiculous. Not  too often. Ninety-nine percent of the time it's  justified, and there's consequences.\"\n\nBut occasionally it does make even you  uncomfortable?\n\n\"Oh yeah. It makes me feel  uncomfortable. But it doesn't mean  it's wrong.\"\n\n 7. James Gandolfini says that when he  was recently approached to play Ernest  Hemingway, he was taken aback. Though  he studied literature at Rutgers, he's not  sure any Hemingway came his way: \"I  couldn't remember a fucking thing I read.  I probably somehow skipped them and  did the test... I'm much more of a life-  experience kind of person.\" But then he  sampled a few short stories and was  blown away. \"I think I can play someone  like that,\" he says. \"I think he did all that stuff in his life for a reason\u2014some of the  reason I think was he was in pain a lot of  the time, and he needed to keep moving.\"\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nMostly, Gandolfini reads mystery books,  particularly to go to sleep. \"I should be  reading better stuff than I do,\" he says. He  mentions James Lee Burke and Stephen  Hunter, whose book Dirty White Boys he's  read twice. \"To me, maybe because my  work is all about feelings and emotions  and things like that, to read a book about  that is a little much sometimes at night. I  just want to read plot, mostly.\"\n\nHe asks me whether I have heard Green  Day's new album yet and talks about the  enduring appeal of Lynyrd Skynyrd. \"Call  Me the Breeze,\" that's his favorite. \"And  there's one song, a very funny song, kind  of like\u2014\" he says, and tries to paraphrase  the lyric: \"'When I'm out on the road and  I come home, don't ask me about my  business, leave me alone.' Very funny shit.  I don't remember the name of it.\"\n\nAs it happens, I believe he really doesn't  remember the song's title, but maybe he  prefers not to reflect on the absurdly  Freudian fact that this minor southern-rock  anthem about the need to be left alone  when you come home from touring (Well, \"What's your favorite color and do you dig  the brothers?\" is drivin' me up a wall), the  one James Gandolfini has been enthusing  about in one of his rare interviews, is called  \"Don't Ask Me No Questions.\"\n\n8. It is through both his patience and  impatience with questions in which he  sees little purpose that James Gandolfini  allows some insight into himself.\n\nWhat do you think people  misunderstand about you?\n\n \"Nothing. I don't think they think about  me that much. I don't think it's a topic of  anyone's conversation.\" He pauses to laugh  at what he clearly sees as an absurd notion.  \"It doesn't make a bit of fucking difference.\"\n\nYeah, but I think what you're saying is  that you don't really want people to think  about you too much.\n\n\"No,\" he says firmly. \"I'm not saying  that. I'm saying that I do my job. When I'm  playing Tony Soprano, they think I'm like  that, and when I'm playing someone else,  they should think that character's like  that. It's not me.\"\n\nIt must be weird and maybe a bit  uncomfortable when people project onto  you parts of Tony Soprano's personality.\n\n\"You have to understand it, that's all.  It's no big deal. When people want to ask  you to dinner sometimes and they don't  know you, they want Tony Soprano to  come to dinner. They don't want Jim  Gandolfini to come to dinner. I would bore  the fucking tits off them.\"\n\nNo, you seem very good dinner company.\n\nHe smiles. \"Why, thank you, sweetie.\"\n\n 9. James Gandolfini grew up in Park  Ridge, New Jersey, in a family where his  parents spoke Italian in the house. (His  mother was born in Italy; his father was  born in America but returned to Italy as a  2- year-old.) His father would put the  speakers out on the lawn and listen to  Italian singers as he cut the grass.\n\n What's the most Italian thing about you?\n\n \"Loyalty to friends and family, I think.  I guess you'd have to ask them.  Stubbornness. I don't know. I think I'm  very Italian. I communicate a little bit  through yelling. A lot of our family does  that. I've been working on that.\"\n\nIn which ways are you most like your  father?  \"I yell when I can't put shit together.  When you've got to screw little fucking  screws into little things, like putting a  table together. I start screaming, 'This  fucking crap...this shit...fucking Japanese  shit...' Like that.\"\n\nCan't you get people to do that stuff for  you these days?\n\n\"I don't do it that much anymore, I got  to admit. Only when I put together  something for my kid or something. But  no, I used to have to put Ikea furniture  together when we were first married and  had the baby. All that Ikea shit. I used to  swear and yell. So occasionally I'll have  that Italian fucking fit. Which is funny.  I mean, I've had some good laughs at my  father's fits. But then, some ain't so funny.\"\n\nIn what ways are you most like your  mother?\n\n\"I don't know\u2014introspective,  depressed, a little judgmental, kind of  smart about people.\"\n\nWhen you were growing up, do you  think you thought you'd do something to  be noticed?\n\n\"No, not really noticed. I knew I'd do  something a little different. I knew I  wouldn't be able to\u2014well, that's not really  true. I went to college, and then this girl I  knew died. Let's not make a big deal out  of that.\"\n\nHe says this so suddenly, and it is so  unexpected, that I ask him to repeat it.\n\n\"The girl I knew died in a car accident,  and I\u2014that changed me a lot,\" he says  quietly. \"Before that I don't know what I  would have done.\"\n\nHe was 19. Her name was Lynn  Jacobson. He had been going out with her  for two years. He was still a junior, but she  had graduated. He wasn't in the car. \"She  was a smart, lovely girl who worked two  jobs to get her way through college and to  help her family,\" he says. \"It didn't make  much sense. It made me very angry.\"\n\n After that, things seemed different to  him. \"I think it changed me a little bit,\" he  says. \"I think I was studying advertising or  something before that, and after that I  changed a little bit. You know, it must  have changed me a little bit.\"\n\nDo you think maybe that you might not  have done what you've done if that hadn't  happened?\n\n\"Yeah, I think I might not have done  what I've done. I don't know what I'd have  done. I think it definitely pushed me in this  direction. I don't know why. Just as a way to  get out some of those feelings. I don't know.\"\n\nWas there any of that \"Life isn't to be  wasted...\"?\n\n\"No. If anything, it was 'Why plan for  the future? Fuck it.' It was like 'Fuck this.'\"\n\nWhen he won his Emmy last year, he  acknowledged Jacobson from the stage  but didn't explain further. He figures that  maybe it is time, out of respect.\n\n\"In a way, I'm only realizing now how  much it affected me,\" he says. \"I think I'm  calming down now from the anger and  being able to look back at it. It still affects  me.... But I don't want this to come across  as 'poor me' or anything,\" he adds. \"The  tragedy of it is her\u2014what a lovely, lovely  person she was\u2014not how it affected me.  I just need to say that.\"\n\n10. Two more questions: How are  you enjoying your enduring status as a sex  symbol?\n\nHe sighs. \"There is no enduring status.  I have no answer to any of that, and I don't  see it in my life. I think I play a character  that likes to fuck and happens to fuck a lot  on the show, and that might be something  people enjoy, but other than that... I mean,  the guy has a healthy libido. That's about  all that's healthy about him. I don't have  anything to say about that. It's flattering  that anybody could\u2014at a certain age and a  certain paunch and a certain baldness\u2014  the fact that anyone would suppose their  attention on you is extremely flattering.\"\n\nWhat's the last dream you remember?\n\n\"Nah. I'm not talking about my dreams.  They get enough of me. They don't need  my dreams.\"\n\n11. James Gandolfini picks up a green  crayon from the table and starts drawing on the edge of the next table's paper  tablecloth. First he doodles a cartoon face,  then a three-dimensional cube. He says he  often draws cubes, so I ask him what they  represent. I offer suggestions. Building  blocks? Prisons? He doesn't answer, just  looks at me in a way that suggests he may  pity how my mind works.\n\nWe stumble into talking about the  things that keep him awake at night, and  he says that he has learned in recent years  that \"it's just feelings\u2014and feelings, as they  say, aren't facts. You have to be careful,  because some feelings are just feelings.\"\n\nI ask him where he picked up wisdom  like this.\n\n\"I don't know. Some people a lot  smarter than me have told me certain  things. And I've learned a lot from the  therapy sessions in the show. And some  therapy on my own.\"\n\nHe says he never ends up going to  anybody for too long but that it was  useful during his divorce. (His divorce  from the mother of his son was, to judge  from its tabloid echoes, a rough one,  though he mentions how well they now  get along.) He went to therapy again a  couple of weeks ago. \"Then I went away,  and that all got shot to hell,\" he says. \"I try  it occasionally, that's all.\"\n\nI ask him whether it's stranger when he  goes to therapy because he acts out so many  therapy sessions at work on The Sopranos.\n\n\"No,\" he scoffs. \"They're completely  separate. I'm not that crazy. No. Tony  Soprano does not enter into my psyche in  that way.\"\n\nLater I mention that three years ago he  described himself as \"a 260-pound  Woody Allen.\"\n\n\"There is that,\" he says.\n\nBut less so now?\n\n\"It's 270 now. But yeah, it's less so, a  little bit.\"\n\nHow important is happiness to you?\n\n\"It wasn't for a long time. I didn't even  mind wallowing in misery occasionally.  I found that enjoyable. But when your son  comes along, you want to try and show as  much of the good stuff that's out there to  him. Because there's plenty of good stuff.\"\n\nHow happy are you these days?\n\n \"I think I'm content. Reasonably  content. But still twitchy.\"\n\nChris Heath is a GQ writer-at-large."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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