His portrayal of the eccentric silver-haired enforcer earned him fans all around the world
“I have an arsenal of weapons and an army of men, and I’m going to use them,” Tony Sirico, who played the mob henchman “Paulie Walnuts” in the HBO crime drama The Sopranos was once quoted as saying, “and … I’m going to come back here and carve my initials in your forehead. You better learn a lesson. You better show me the respect I deserve.”
The lines seem to have come from a script for the groundbreaking series, which aired from 1999 to 2007, won 21 Emmy Awards and is acclaimed as one of the greatest programmes in television history. But the words are taken verbatim from a 1970 police charging record, documenting the reasons for Sirico’s arrest on extortion and weapons charges.
Long before he became renowned for playing a silver-haired enforcer for New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano (played by James Gandolfini), Sirico was a real-life hoodlum who was arrested 28 times and spent two stints in prison, totalling almost three years.
The memories of his earlier life were never far from the surface as Sirico portrayed Paulie Walnuts throughout the six-season run of The Sopranos, creating one of television’s most unforgettable characters. Sirico was 79 when he died on 8 July at an assisted-living facility in Florida.
Before The Sopranos, Sirico had played a mobster in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990), had acted in several films directed by Woody Allen, including Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite and Everyone Says I Love You, and appeared in the 1997 police corruption drama Cop Land with Sylvester Stallone and Ray Liotta.
When he auditioned for The Sopranos, Sirico was 55 and living with his mother in a small apartment in Brooklyn. He tried out for two roles and was told by David Chase, the show’s creator, that he didn’t get either of them.
“He said, ‘No, I got you in mind for somebody else,’” Sirico said on CNN’s Larry King Live in 2001, “and along came Paulie Walnuts.”
The character’s formal name was Peter Paul Gualtieri, who had been a trusted lieutenant of Tony Soprano’s late father, Johnny Boy Soprano. During the show’s first season, Paulie Walnuts described his life in this way: “I was born, grew up, spent a few years in the Army, a few more in the can and here I am, a half a wise guy.”
He got his nickname when he thought he thought he had hijacked a truck loaded with televisions. It turned out to carrying nuts.
Sirico wore a pinkie ring in real life, the same as Paulie. When the show’s wardrobe staff picked out a shirt for him, he said he had one just like it at home. On the show, while sitting outside a meat market that was an informal mob clubhouse, Paulie would flip open an aluminium reflector, brightening the tan on his neck and face.
And then there was his hair: a pompadour first sculpted into place in the Fifties, now highlighted by two wings of silver slicked back on the sides. Sirico refused to let anyone touch his hair and spent hours combing and spraying it before shooting a scene.
His character killed more people than any other during the course of the show – nine – but there was much more to The Sopranos than mob violence. It was about families, both criminal and nuclear; about being part of a fading culture failing to adapt to change; and about the problems associated with addiction and depression.
When Tony Soprano revealed he was seeing a therapist, Paulie admitted he had, too: “I had some issues.”
Sirico once said, “If Paulie can’t curse, he can’t talk,” and he delivered some of the show’s funniest lines, always in a serious, deadpan style, usually punctuated by profanity.
Perhaps Sirico’s most memorable episode came in the third season, when he and his fellow mobster – Christopher Moltisanti (played by Michael Imperioli) – journey to New Jersey’s desolate Pine Barrens in pursuit of a Russian rival in the dead of winter.
Paulie receives his orders from Tony Soprano, who says, “Bad connection, so I’m going to talk fast. The guy you are looking for is an ex-commando. He killed 16 Chechen rebels single-handed.”
Paulie: “Get… outta here.”
Tony: “Yeah, nice, huh? He was with the interior ministry. Guy’s some kind of Russian Green Beret. This guy cannot come back to tell this story. You understand?”
The telephone connection goes dead, and Paulie explains the situation to Christopher: “You’re not going to believe this. He killed 16 Czechoslovakians. Guy was an interior decorator.”
Christopher: “His house looked like s***.”
They chase the Russian on foot through the snow, wearing light leather jackets and no hats or gloves. (The scene was filmed in -23C weather.) Christopher shoots at the fleeing Russian but succeeds only in killing a deer.
Running through woods, Paulie tumbles to the ground, ends up with snow caked in his mussed hair, then looks forlornly at his foot, saying, “I lost my shoe.”
Gennaro Anthony Sirico Jr was born 29 July 1942, in Brooklyn and grew up in the heavily Italian Bensonhurst section. His father was a dockworker and later ran a candy shop, and his mother was a homemaker.
Young “Junior” Sirico, as he was then known, was first detained by the police when he was seven for stealing change from a newsstand. As a teenager, he was shot in the leg and back when he kissed another boy’s girlfriend.
“Where I grew up every guy tried to prove himself,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. “Either you had a tattoo or a gun scar. I have both.”
He served in the Army, then returned to Brooklyn, admiring the style of the gangsters in his neighbourhood.
“I got mixed up with these guys,” Tony Sirico once said, “and before I knew it, I was a stickup artist, robbing every nightclub in New York.”
His first prison stint came in 1967.
“I was always packing heat,” he told *The Times*. “The first time I got locked up, they searched me for weapons – and I had three guns on me. They’d ask why I was carrying, and I’d say, ‘I live in a tough neighborhood.’ It wasn’t a lie.”
In 1970, Sirico landed in New York’s maximum-security Sing Sing prison. There, he watched a troupe of actors who were former inmates perform. “I thought, ‘I can do that,’” he said.
After serving 20 months, Sirico began taking acting classes. One of his teachers had to remind him not to bring his gun to class. He landed his first role as an extra in the 1974 crime film *Crazy Joe*, and soon after, began landing small parts in commercials and TV shows, often playing cops or crooks.
“I’ve been in over 40 movies and god knows how many TV shows,” Sirico said on *Larry King Live*, “and in most of them, I’m holding a gun. But I don’t feel bad about it, Larry. It pays the bills.”
Sirico was married early in life, but the marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by two children, two brothers, a sister, and at least two grandchildren.
When Sirico took on the role of Paulie Walnuts in *The Sopranos*, he had one condition: he wouldn’t play an informant. Still tied to his old Brooklyn neighborhood, Sirico refused to portray a rat. The only time he ever requested a script change was when his character was described as a “bully”—though he had no issue with Paulie being called a “psycho.”
The success of *The Sopranos* opened new doors for Sirico, including a voice role as a talking dog in *Family Guy* in 2013. He also used his fame to raise millions of dollars for charity.
Unlike many characters in the show, Paulie Walnuts survived all six seasons of *The Sopranos*, making Sirico a beloved figure both on-screen and in his Brooklyn neighborhood. Even former adversaries on the police force warmed to him.
“I was running out of my local OTB,” Sirico told the *New York Daily News* in 2000, “and a cop was writing a ticket for my double-parked car. When he saw me, he tore up the ticket and asked for an autographed picture, which I carry in my trunk… In one year, it’s like I got a new life. Sometimes I have to remind myself I’m Tony Sirico, from Bensonhurst.”
