The Last Wiseguys: Saying Goodbye to Hollywood's Greatest Mafia Generation
By Chris M. Forte
There was a time when you couldn't think of a Mafia movie without immediately picturing the same unforgettable faces.
A sharp suit.
A gold pinky ring.
A cigarette hanging from the corner of a weathered smile.
An unmistakable New York accent.
These men weren't just actors. They were the Mafia genre.
Today, as I write this in 2026, that generation is quietly slipping away.
Some have already left us. Others have retired. Some are still with us, but understandably slowing down as age catches up with them. And with the recent passing of Vincent Pastore, it feels as though another piece of Hollywood's greatest era has disappeared.
For Italian Americans especially, these actors represented something larger than organized crime. They represented a generation of performers who proudly carried their heritage onto movie screens around the world.
They Created the Modern Mafia
Before the 1970s, gangster movies certainly existed.
James Cagney.
Edward G. Robinson.
George Raft.
But everything changed when Francis Ford Coppola introduced The Godfather.
Then Martin Scorsese followed with Mean Streets, Goodfellas, and Casino.
Suddenly, Mafia films weren't simply crime stories.
They became Shakespeare.
Family.
Honor.
Loyalty.
Betrayal.
Religion.
Immigration.
Italian-American identity.
And standing in the middle of it all was an extraordinary generation of actors.
Robert De Niro
Few actors have influenced modern cinema as profoundly as Robert De Niro.
Born in New York City in 1943, De Niro grew up around the artists, streets, and neighborhoods that later shaped many of his performances. He studied acting seriously and became known for immersing himself in his characters with extraordinary discipline.
His early collaboration with Martin Scorsese in Mean Streets introduced audiences to the explosive energy that would define much of his career. He then played the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, delivering much of the performance in Sicilian and portraying the gradual transformation of a poor immigrant into a powerful underworld patriarch. The role earned him his first Academy Award.
De Niro’s Mafia legacy did not stop there.
In Goodfellas, he played Jimmy Conway, a charming but increasingly cold-blooded career criminal inspired by Jimmy Burke. In Casino, he became Sam “Ace” Rothstein, a brilliant gambling expert whose controlled Las Vegas empire collapsed under the weight of greed, jealousy, and mob politics. In The Untouchables, he portrayed Al Capone as theatrical, vain, and savage. In Analyze This, he affectionately parodied his own gangster image.
Then, in 2019, he reunited with Scorsese, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino for The Irishman. As Frank Sheeran, De Niro portrayed not merely a gangster but an old man looking back on the relationships, betrayals, and moral emptiness of his life.
De Niro has won two Academy Awards and has remained active well into his eighties. His acclaimed performance in Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon brought him another Oscar nomination nearly half a century after his first, demonstrating the astonishing length of his career.
What makes De Niro irreplaceable is not simply his ability to appear threatening. It is his control. A glance, a tightened jaw, or a moment of silence can communicate more than an entire speech.
He helped establish the language through which modern Mafia characters are still portrayed.
Joe Pesci
Joe Pesci may be the greatest scene-stealer Hollywood has ever produced.
Tommy DeVito.
Nicky Santoro.
Those names alone bring entire scenes rushing back to mind.
Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1943, Pesci began performing as a child. He worked in music and comedy and, for a time, performed alongside Frank Vincent. His film career appeared uncertain until Robert De Niro saw Pesci in The Death Collector and helped bring him to Martin Scorsese’s attention. Scorsese cast him as Joey LaMotta in Raging Bull, beginning one of cinema’s great collaborations.
Pesci’s Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas became one of the most frightening gangsters ever placed on screen. Tommy could be hilarious one moment and murderous the next. His famous “funny how?” exchange works because the audience, like Henry Hill, cannot determine whether he is joking.
The performance earned Pesci the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In Casino, he played Nicky Santoro, another volatile criminal, but the character was more than a repetition of Tommy. Nicky was ambitious, jealous, reckless, and increasingly convinced that the rules no longer applied to him. His inability to control his appetites helped destroy everything around him.
Pesci also demonstrated remarkable comic talent. In My Cousin Vinny, he created one of the most lovable characters of his career. In the Home Alone films, he turned his threatening image into physical comedy. In A Bronx Tale, his brief appearance carried the quiet authority of a man who did not need an introduction.
Pesci largely retired from acting in 1999, making only occasional appearances afterward. That made his return in Scorsese’s 2019 film The Irishman especially meaningful.
As Pennsylvania crime boss Russell Bufalino, Pesci did something unexpected. He did not repeat Tommy or Nicky. Instead, he became soft-spoken, controlled, almost gentle. Russell rarely needed to threaten anyone openly. The danger existed beneath his courtesy.
It was a masterclass in restraint and earned Pesci another Academy Award nomination.
Today, he appears only rarely. Every appearance therefore feels like a gift—a reminder of a performer who could be hilarious, frightening, heartbreaking, and unforgettable, sometimes within the same scene.
Al Pacino
Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone remains one of the greatest characters in the history of cinema.
Born Alfredo James Pacino in East Harlem in 1940 and raised largely in the Bronx by his mother and Sicilian grandparents, Pacino came from the New York theatrical world. He studied at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg and built his reputation onstage before becoming a film star.
When The Godfather begins, Michael is the respectable son.
He is a decorated war veteran. He sits apart from his family’s criminal affairs. He tells Kay, “That’s my family, Kay. It’s not me.”
But it becomes him.
Across The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Pacino transforms Michael from a quiet outsider into a calculating, isolated, and spiritually hollow Mafia ruler. The transformation is so gradual that audiences can almost miss the exact moment when Michael loses his soul.
Pacino later returned to the role in The Godfather Part III, portraying an older Michael desperately seeking legitimacy and forgiveness but unable to escape the consequences of his past.
His other crime roles became equally famous. Tony Montana in Scarface was loud, hungry, vulgar, and operatic—the opposite of Michael’s icy restraint. In Carlito’s Way, Pacino played a former criminal trying unsuccessfully to escape his old world. In Donnie Brasco, he portrayed Benjamin “Lefty” Ruggiero as a weary, low-level mobster whose friendship with an undercover FBI agent becomes one of the most tragic relationships in the genre.
In The Irishman, Pacino finally joined De Niro and Pesci in a Scorsese Mafia epic, playing labor leader Jimmy Hoffa with pride, charisma, humor, anger, and fatal stubbornness.
Pacino’s career has extended far beyond gangster films, earning him an Academy Award, Tony Awards, and Emmy Awards. Yet Michael Corleone remains his towering contribution to the Mafia genre.
Younger actors can study the performance.
They can admire it.
They can imitate its stillness.
But no one can truly repeat it.
Vincent Pastore
For many fans—including me—Vincent Pastore felt like someone we knew.
Born in the Bronx in 1946 and raised in New Rochelle, New York, Pastore served in the United States Navy, attended Pace University, and managed nightclubs before pursuing acting. That unconventional path may have contributed to the natural, lived-in quality he brought to his characters.
Before The Sopranos, Pastore appeared in Goodfellas, Awakenings, Carlito’s Way, The Jerky Boys, and HBO’s Gotti. He became part of a community of New York character actors who repeatedly appeared in crime films, sometimes in small roles that audiences remembered long after the credits ended.
His great role was Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero.
Big Pussy was not simply another member of Tony’s crew. He was an old friend—someone who belonged at the family barbecue, inside the Soprano home, and beside Tony during moments of confidence and fear.
That made his betrayal devastating.
Pussy became an FBI informant, but Pastore never played him as a simple villain. He showed a man trapped between prison, family, friendship, shame, and self-preservation. Even when the audience knew what he had done, it was difficult not to feel sorry for him.
His final episode, “Funhouse,” remains one of the most painful chapters of The Sopranos. Tony, Silvio, and Paulie take their old friend onto a boat knowing that he will not return. The scene is violent, but what makes it unforgettable is the sadness.
After leaving the series as a regular, Pastore continued acting in television, film, theater, and reality programming. He returned for dream sequences and flashbacks, ensuring that Big Pussy continued haunting Tony long after his death.
Pastore died at his home on City Island in the Bronx on August 1, 2026. He was 80. Friends and colleagues remembered his warmth, generosity, loyalty, and willingness to help younger actors.
His death feels symbolic.
Another chair at the table is empty.
Another familiar voice has gone silent.
Another member of the old crew has left us.
Frank Vincent
Frank Vincent may have played more memorable wiseguys than almost anyone.
Billy Batts.
Frank Marino.
Phil Leotardo.
Born in Massachusetts and raised in New Jersey, Vincent initially pursued music. Before either man became famous, he and Joe Pesci performed together as a comedy and musical team. Their real-life friendship eventually carried them into some of the most celebrated crime films ever made.
In Raging Bull, Vincent played Salvy Batts. In Goodfellas, he became Billy Batts, whose insult toward Tommy DeVito sets one of the film’s central tragedies into motion. In Casino, he played Frank Marino, Nicky Santoro’s associate and eventual executioner.
Then came Phil Leotardo in The Sopranos.
Phil could be funny, bitter, theatrical, prideful, and horrifying. He represented the old New York Mafia establishment and its contempt for Tony Soprano’s New Jersey organization. Vincent brought decades of screen-wiseguy experience into the part, making Phil feel like the culmination of his entire career.
He understood how to speak the language of the genre without turning it into parody. His face could show insult, calculation, vanity, and rage before he said a word.
Frank Vincent died in 2017 at the age of 80. His passing felt like the loss of one of the genre’s defining antagonists—a man who could walk into a scene and immediately make everyone nervous.
James Gandolfini
No discussion of modern Mafia acting can be complete without James Gandolfini.
Born in New Jersey in 1961 to an Italian-American family, Gandolfini did not initially look like a conventional Hollywood leading man. That became part of his power. He looked like someone you might actually encounter in a North Jersey restaurant, hardware store, school office, or neighborhood bar.
Before The Sopranos, he delivered memorable supporting performances in True Romance, Get Shorty, The Juror, and other films. But Tony Soprano changed everything.
Tony was a mob boss who suffered panic attacks.
He loved his children but repeatedly betrayed his wife.
He could comfort a grieving friend and order a murder in the same day.
He was funny.
Depressed.
Manipulative.
Sentimental.
Violent.
Generous.
Cruel.
Frightened.
Gandolfini somehow made all of those contradictions believable.
Earlier movie gangsters often appeared to be mythological figures. Tony Soprano was painfully human. Viewers saw him in therapy, in his swimming pool, at his children’s school, arguing with his mother, eating cold cuts from the refrigerator, and worrying that his authority was slipping away.
Gandolfini won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe for the role. Tony Soprano became one of television’s defining characters and helped establish the era of complicated antiheroes that followed.
Yet Gandolfini was more than Tony. He played gentle, wounded, comic, and morally decent men in films such as The Mexican, The Last Castle, Enough Said, and The Drop. Those performances revealed a sensitivity that his imposing presence sometimes concealed.
His sudden death in Rome in 2013, at only 51, still feels unreal. He should have had decades of work ahead of him.
The loss is made more painful by the knowledge that nobody else could have been Tony Soprano.
Not like that.
Tony Sirico
Who could ever replace Peter Paul “Paulie Walnuts” Gualtieri?
Tony Sirico did not merely play Paulie.
In many ways, he embodied him.
Sirico was born in New York City in 1942 and grew up in Brooklyn. His life before acting included repeated encounters with the law, an experience that gave him an authenticity no acting school could manufacture.
When he entered the entertainment world, he frequently played gangsters and tough guys. He appeared in films including Goodfellas, Mighty Aphrodite, Cop Land, and Mickey Blue Eyes. Yet Paulie Walnuts became his immortal character.
The white wings in his hair.
The pointed finger.
The suspicious stare.
The malapropisms.
The germophobia.
The superstitions.
The offended dignity.
Paulie could make audiences laugh simply by reacting to a room. Yet Sirico never allowed the character to become harmless. Paulie was vain, selfish, paranoid, and capable of sudden violence.
That mixture made him unmistakably part of The Sopranos world: hilarious until the moment he became frightening.
Sirico died in 2022 at the age of 79. With his passing, the series lost one of its most recognizable voices and one of the last performers whose real-life history seemed connected to the disappearing street culture portrayed on the show.
There will never be another Paulie Walnuts.
And perhaps there should not be.
Dominic Chianese
Dominic Chianese became one of the great elder statesmen of Mafia entertainment.
Born in the Bronx in 1931 to an Italian-American family, Chianese developed his craft through theater and music before entering film. He appeared as Johnny Ola in The Godfather Part II, serving as Hyman Roth’s quiet messenger and helping connect the Corleone story to the world of Miami and pre-revolutionary Cuba.
Decades later, he found his defining role as Corrado “Junior” Soprano.
Uncle Junior begins The Sopranos as an aging mobster still hungry for recognition. He resents Tony’s popularity, participates in a plot against him, becomes the nominal boss of the family, and spends years fighting prosecution.
Yet Chianese gradually revealed Junior’s vulnerability.
His pride covered insecurity.
His cruelty existed beside loneliness.
His authority faded into illness, confusion, and dementia.
One of the saddest moments in the entire series comes near the end, when Tony visits Junior and realizes that the old man barely remembers their family, their conflicts, or the criminal empire that once defined his identity.
“You and my dad,” Tony tells him. “You two ran North Jersey.”
Junior can only respond faintly: “We did?”
Chianese made that decline heartbreaking.
He is also an accomplished singer, and his performance of the Italian song “Core ’ngrato” at the end of the third season gave the series one of its most moving cultural moments.
Watching Dominic Chianese today feels like watching one of the last living bridges between The Godfather generation and The Sopranos generation.
Michael Imperioli, Lorraine Bracco, Steve Buscemi, Chazz Palminteri, Paul Sorvino, Ray Liotta...
Some have passed.
Some continue acting.
Others have largely retired.
Paul Sorvino's commanding presence gave us Paul Cicero in Goodfellas.
Ray Liotta's Henry Hill became one of cinema's greatest narrators before his untimely death.
Chazz Palminteri gave us A Bronx Tale, one of the finest Italian-American stories ever filmed.
Michael Imperioli carried Christopher Moltisanti through one of television's greatest character arcs.
Lorraine Bracco delivered unforgettable performances in both Goodfellas and The Sopranos.
Steve Buscemi proved that even an outsider could perfectly fit into the world of organized crime.
Together, they created an era that feels impossible to duplicate.
Paul Sorvino
Paul Sorvino possessed the kind of face and presence that immediately suggested authority.
Born in Brooklyn in 1939 to Italian-American parents, Sorvino trained as a singer before turning toward acting. His career included theater, television, comedy, drama, and opera, but he became especially associated with powerful Italian-American characters.
In Goodfellas, Sorvino played Paul Cicero, the restrained neighborhood boss inspired by Paul Vario. Unlike Tommy DeVito or Jimmy Conway, Paulie did not need explosive speeches.
He controlled through stillness.
A look from Sorvino could end a conversation. A quiet warning felt more dangerous than shouting. His Paulie presented himself as a protector and father figure, but his loyalty lasted only as long as it served the organization.
Sorvino also portrayed mob figures in The Rocketeer, The Firm, and numerous television productions. He played a law-enforcement authority on Law & Order, demonstrating that the same commanding presence could exist on either side of the law.
Offscreen, he took pride in his Italian heritage, his family, music, sculpture, cooking, and the arts. His daughter, Mira Sorvino, became an Academy Award-winning actor in her own right.
Paul Sorvino died in 2022 at the age of 83.
With him went one of the last great screen patriarchs—a performer who could dominate a room without moving from his chair.
Ray Liotta
Ray Liotta’s laugh helped open the door to one of the greatest Mafia films ever made.
“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.”
With those words, Henry Hill welcomes us into Goodfellas.
Liotta was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1954 and was adopted as an infant. Although he was not raised in an Italian-American household, his surname and screen identity led many viewers to associate him closely with the Italian-American crime genre.
Before Goodfellas, he attracted attention in Something Wild and played Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams. But Henry Hill made him immortal.
Liotta had the difficult task of guiding the audience through a world filled with larger-than-life performances by De Niro, Pesci, Sorvino, and others. His narration gave the film its speed, excitement, seduction, and eventual panic.
At first, Henry loves the life.
The suits.
The money.
The restaurant tables brought through the kitchen.
The respect.
The feeling of belonging to something powerful.
By the final act, that glamour has collapsed into cocaine, paranoia, helicopters, betrayal, and fear.
Liotta made the transformation believable. His face could express boyish excitement, arrogance, terror, and exhaustion. Without him, Goodfellas would still contain brilliant scenes, but it would not possess the same beating heart.
He later appeared in Cop Land, Hannibal, Blow, Narc, Killing Them Softly, The Many Saints of Newark, and many other films. He also became known to a new generation through his voice performance as Tommy Vercetti in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
Ray Liotta died unexpectedly in 2022 at the age of 67 while working in the Dominican Republic.
His death felt far too soon.
That unmistakable laugh should still be echoing through new films.
Chazz Palminteri
Chazz Palminteri did more than play a memorable Mafia figure.
He created one of the genre’s most personal stories.
Born Calogero Lorenzo Palminteri in the Bronx in 1952, he grew up in an Italian-American neighborhood and witnessed a killing as a child. That experience eventually inspired his one-man play A Bronx Tale.
Palminteri initially resisted offers that would have required him to surrender control of the story or allow another actor to play Sonny. Robert De Niro recognized the work’s potential and directed the 1993 film adaptation, with Palminteri retaining the role.
Sonny is a neighborhood mob boss, but he is not simply a villain. He becomes a second father to young Calogero, teaching him confidence, power, loyalty, and the difference between being loved and being feared.
The film’s deepest conflict is not between rival gangs. It is between Sonny and Calogero’s hardworking father, Lorenzo, played by De Niro. One offers power and street wisdom; the other offers honesty and moral responsibility.
Palminteri later appeared in The Usual Suspects, Bullets Over Broadway, Analyze This, and numerous other films and television programs. He has continued performing A Bronx Tale onstage, preserving the story’s connection to his own life.
His work reminds us that the Mafia genre can examine Italian-American identity without glorifying crime. Sonny may be charismatic, but the story ultimately recognizes the cost of the life he chose.
Joe Mantegna
Joe Mantegna brought intelligence, confidence, humor, and unmistakable Chicago character to the Mafia genre.
Born Joseph Anthony Mantegna Jr. in Chicago in 1947, he was raised in an Italian-American family and trained at the Goodman School of Drama. Before becoming widely known on film and television, Mantegna built a distinguished stage career. His performance as the aggressive salesman Richard Roma in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross earned him a Tony Award and began a long creative partnership with Mamet.
Mantegna appeared in several of Mamet’s films, including House of Games, Things Change, and Homicide, developing a screen presence built on carefully measured dialogue, quiet confidence, and underlying danger.
His most famous traditional Mafia role came in The Godfather Part III, where he portrayed Joey Zasa.
Zasa represented a newer kind of mobster—public, fashionable, media-conscious, and eager to replace the aging Corleone establishment. He presented himself as a neighborhood businessman and celebrity, but beneath the polished suits and public charm was an ambitious and ruthless criminal determined to seize power.
Mantegna gave Zasa the confidence of a man who believed the future belonged to him. His conflict with Vincent Mancini helped symbolize the struggle between the old Mafia order and a younger, more reckless generation.
He also became familiar to millions of viewers as the voice of Springfield mob boss Fat Tony on The Simpsons. Although played largely for comedy, Fat Tony became one of television’s most enduring parodies of the sophisticated screen gangster.
Outside the Mafia genre, Mantegna demonstrated remarkable range in films such as Searching for Bobby Fischer, Forget Paris, and Liberty Heights. He later found one of his longest-running roles as FBI profiler David Rossi on Criminal Minds, portraying a proud Italian American whose intelligence, experience, and loyalty made him a respected father figure within the team. His career has included more than 100 film credits as well as extensive work in television, theater, directing, and producing.
Mantegna has also spoken about the importance of portraying Italian Americans as more than gangsters. While acknowledging roles such as Joey Zasa and Fat Tony, he has deliberately embraced characters—including David Rossi—who represent Italian Americans as professionals, public servants, and respected members of society.
Joe Mantegna belongs to the great generation of Italian-American character actors, but his legacy reaches far beyond organized-crime stories.
He could play the wiseguy.
He could parody the wiseguy.
And he could remind audiences that Italian-American identity was always much larger than the Mafia.
Michael Imperioli
Michael Imperioli became the voice of a younger and more lost Mafia generation.
Born in Mount Vernon, New York, in 1966 and raised in an Italian-American family, Imperioli appeared briefly as Spider in Goodfellas. In that small but unforgettable role, he became the target of Tommy DeVito’s cruelty.
Years later, he was cast as Christopher Moltisanti in The Sopranos.
Christopher wants to become a powerful gangster, but he also wants to become a screenwriter and filmmaker. He loves the mythology of the Mafia while suffering under its reality. He believes Tony is a father figure, yet Tony repeatedly manipulates, disappoints, and ultimately destroys him.
Imperioli portrayed Christopher’s ambition, addiction, insecurity, resentment, humor, and self-deception with painful honesty. The character could be sympathetic one moment and monstrous the next.
Christopher’s tragedy is that he understands enough to recognize the emptiness around him but never develops the strength to leave it.
Imperioli also wrote several episodes of The Sopranos and won an Emmy for his performance. He later appeared in Life on Mars, Detroit 1-8-7, The White Lotus, and other productions, while continuing to write, direct, perform music, and discuss the artistic and spiritual dimensions of his work.
Of all the performers from The Sopranos, Imperioli may be among the best positioned to carry its legacy forward. Yet even he belongs to a different generation from the young actors now entering Hollywood.
Christopher Moltisanti was supposed to inherit the family.
Instead, he became one of its casualties.
Lorraine Bracco
The Mafia genre was never sustained by male actors alone.
Lorraine Bracco gave it two of its most important women.
Born in Brooklyn in 1954, Bracco worked as a model in France before becoming an actor. Her great film breakthrough came as Karen Hill in Goodfellas.
Karen begins outside Henry’s world. She is initially shocked by its violence, but she is also attracted to its excitement, privilege, and protection. Over time, she becomes both a beneficiary and a prisoner of the criminal life.
Bracco’s narration provides the female counterpart to Henry’s. Through Karen, audiences see the expensive clothes, hidden money, marital betrayal, fear, and moral compromises demanded of mob wives.
Years later, Bracco took on a completely different role in The Sopranos as Dr. Jennifer Melfi.
Melfi does not belong to Tony’s criminal world. She sits across from it.
Her therapy sessions with Tony form the intellectual and psychological center of the series. Through her, the show examines whether a violent man can genuinely change—or whether therapy merely helps him understand and rationalize his behavior more effectively.
Bracco brought intelligence, compassion, frustration, fear, and moral conflict to the role. Melfi’s decision to end Tony’s treatment became one of the series’ most consequential judgments.
Bracco’s contributions demonstrate that the genre’s most essential characters were not always the ones holding guns. Sometimes they were the ones watching, questioning, surviving, or trying unsuccessfully to understand.
Steve Buscemi
Steve Buscemi has always possessed one of cinema’s most distinctive faces.
Born in Brooklyn in 1957 to a family of Italian and Irish ancestry, Buscemi worked as a New York City firefighter before becoming an actor. His career has included independent films, comedies, dramas, and major studio productions.
In the Mafia genre, he became known for characters who seemed slightly out of place—and therefore especially vulnerable.
In Miller’s Crossing, he played Mink. In The Sopranos, he portrayed Tony Blundetto, Tony Soprano’s cousin, who returns from prison hoping to live legitimately.
For a time, Tony B. studies massage therapy and tries to build an honest future. But resentment, financial pressure, wounded pride, and old habits pull him back toward crime. His choices ignite a conflict between New York and New Jersey and place Tony Soprano in an impossible position.
Buscemi brought intelligence and sadness to the role. Tony Blundetto was not simply another gangster. He was a man who briefly glimpsed a different life and then destroyed his opportunity to reach it.
Buscemi also directed several episodes of The Sopranos, including the celebrated “Pine Barrens,” proving that his influence extended behind the camera.
He may not resemble the traditional broad-shouldered Mafia actor, but that difference is precisely what made his work so effective.
Armand Assante
Armand Assante brought elegance and theatrical intensity to the Mafia genre.
Born in New York City in 1949 to an Italian-American father and an Irish-American mother, Assante built a career playing commanding, dangerous, and morally complex men.
His defining mob role came in HBO’s 1996 film Gotti, in which he portrayed Gambino crime-family boss John Gotti. Assante captured Gotti’s confidence, vanity, street charisma, appetite for publicity, and belief in his own invincibility.
The performance avoided treating Gotti as either a simple monster or glamorous folk hero. Instead, Assante showed the dangerous combination of charm, ego, ambition, and violence that carried Gotti to the top and eventually helped bring him down.
Assante won an Emmy for the role.
He also portrayed a fictionalized gangster in Hoffa, appeared as mobster Roberto Duran in American Gangster, and played crime figures in numerous other productions.
His version of Gotti remains one of the strongest performances ever given in a television Mafia film.
Danny Aiello
Danny Aiello carried the warmth, frustration, humor, and toughness of old New York.
Born in Manhattan in 1933 and raised in the Bronx, Aiello did not begin acting professionally until relatively late in life. He nevertheless built a remarkable career.
He appeared as Tony Rosato in The Godfather Part II, delivering the memorable line, “Michael Corleone says hello,” during an attempted killing. Interestingly, Aiello later said he improvised the line.
In Once Upon a Time in America, he played a police chief. In The Purple Rose of Cairo, Moonstruck, Harlem Nights, and many other films, he brought a recognizably New York presence to the screen.
His greatest role may have been Sal, the Italian-American pizzeria owner in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. Sal is not a mobster, but the performance belongs in any discussion of Italian-American screen identity. Aiello made him proud, stubborn, affectionate, prejudiced, hardworking, and deeply human.
Aiello died in 2019 at the age of 86.
He represented the kind of character actor Hollywood once produced in abundance: someone who seemed to carry an entire neighborhood in his voice.
Steven Van Zandt
Steven Van Zandt was already famous as a musician when David Chase cast him as Silvio Dante in The Sopranos.
A longtime member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, Van Zandt had little conventional acting experience. Yet his distinctive appearance, musical sense of timing, and understanding of Italian-American mannerisms helped make Silvio one of the show’s most recognizable characters.
Silvio was Tony’s consigliere—the calm adviser who could interpret a room, deliver bad news, and remain composed when others panicked. His carefully styled hair, expressive scowl, and imitation of Michael Corleone became essential parts of the show’s humor.
Yet Silvio was not merely comic relief. He was fully capable of violence and carried out some of the series’ most disturbing acts with professional detachment.
Van Zandt later starred in Lilyhammer, playing another gangster who enters witness protection in Norway. The series extended his screen persona while placing it in an entirely different cultural setting.
Silvio Dante demonstrated that the Mafia genre could still create an iconic character from an unexpected performer.
Steve Schirripa
Steve Schirripa brought warmth, insecurity, and unexpected sensitivity to Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri.
Born in Brooklyn in 1957 to an Italian-American father and Jewish mother, Schirripa worked in entertainment management before becoming widely recognized as an actor.
When Bobby first appears in The Sopranos, he seems almost too gentle for the criminal world. He cares for Uncle Junior, loves model trains, mourns his wife deeply, and lacks the swagger of Tony, Paulie, or Christopher.
Yet Bobby’s story gradually becomes darker. His marriage to Janice draws him closer to Tony, and Tony eventually forces him to commit his first murder during a bitter act of personal domination.
Schirripa showed how the Mafia destroys even those who appear least suited to its violence.
Bobby’s death in a model-train store remains one of the series’ most heartbreaking scenes. The setting reflects the childlike refuge he sought from the brutality surrounding him.
Schirripa later appeared in Blue Bloods and became a popular podcaster and commentator on The Sopranos.
Federico Castelluccio
Federico Castelluccio gave The Sopranos one of its most quietly dangerous figures.
Born in Naples in 1964 and raised in Paterson, New Jersey, Castelluccio is both an actor and an accomplished visual artist.
As Furio Giunta, he represented a direct connection to Italy’s criminal underworld. Furio was disciplined, physically intimidating, loyal, and far less sentimental about violence than many of Tony’s American-born associates.
Yet his growing love for Carmela Soprano revealed another side of the character. Their unfulfilled relationship became one of the series’ most restrained and emotionally charged storylines.
Furio ultimately disappeared rather than betray Tony openly, leaving behind one of the show’s great unresolved longings.
Castelluccio’s authentic Italian background, language skills, and physical presence gave the character a credibility that could not easily have been imitated.
The Women Who Held the World Together
The Mafia genre would be incomplete without the women who portrayed its wives, mothers, daughters, doctors, victims, and survivors.
Diane Keaton gave Kay Corleone a gradual awakening from innocence to horror. Talia Shire made Connie Corleone’s journey from abused bride to hardened family insider one of The Godfather saga’s longest transformations.
Livia Soprano, played by Nancy Marchand, became one of television’s most terrifying mothers without carrying a gun. Edie Falco’s Carmela Soprano embodied the moral compromises of someone who condemned her husband’s behavior while enjoying the security it provided.
Aida Turturro made Janice Soprano selfish, funny, manipulative, wounded, and recognizably related to Tony. Drea de Matteo brought vulnerability and tragedy to Adriana La Cerva, whose love for Christopher trapped her between the FBI and the mob.
These women did not merely stand beside the wiseguys.
They revealed the emotional price everyone else paid for the wiseguys’ choices.
More Than Mobsters
Here is something many critics and casual viewers miss.
These actors were not simply portraying criminals.
They were portraying families.
Churches.
Neighborhoods.
Social clubs.
Restaurants.
Funerals.
Weddings.
Baptisms.
Sunday dinners.
Old-country customs.
Arguments around the kitchen table.
Many came from Italian-American families and understood the gestures, humor, food, speech patterns, Catholic imagery, generational tensions, and fierce family loyalty from personal experience.
Others came from different backgrounds but treated the material with such seriousness that they became inseparable from it.
The best performances did not suggest that all Italian Americans were gangsters. They used the Mafia family as a dark reflection of the immigrant family—a corrupted version of loyalty, entrepreneurship, protection, hierarchy, and tradition.
That distinction matters.
Italian Americans have every right to object when Hollywood reduces an entire people to organized crime. Our history includes workers, farmers, fishermen, soldiers, clergy, artists, scientists, teachers, business owners, public servants, and ordinary families whose lives had nothing to do with the Mafia.
At the same time, these films became part of Italian-American cultural history because so many Italian-American artists used them to explore assimilation, prejudice, masculinity, ambition, faith, and family.
The actors gave those themes faces we could never forget.
Who Will Take Their Place?
That is the question I keep asking myself.
Who becomes the next Robert De Niro?
The next Joe Pesci?
The next Al Pacino?
The next James Gandolfini?
The next Frank Vincent?
The next Paul Sorvino?
There are talented actors working today.
Michael Imperioli continues to create interesting work. Bobby Cannavale possesses the intensity and versatility required for complicated crime roles. Alessandro Nivola gave a strong performance as Dickie Moltisanti in The Many Saints of Newark. Sebastian Maniscalco has moved from comedy into acting, appearing in The Irishman and other films. John Magaro has demonstrated the quiet authenticity of a classic New York character actor.
Actors such as Vincent Piazza, Michael Rispoli, Domenick Lombardozzi, Giovanni Ribisi, Louis Cancelmi, and others have also contributed memorable performances to contemporary crime stories.
But Hollywood has changed.
The classic Mafia film is no longer the dominant cultural event it once was. Streaming has divided audiences among hundreds of programs. Superhero franchises, fantasy spectacles, established intellectual properties, and global blockbusters command much of the industry’s attention.
Young actors may play criminals, but few receive the opportunity to build decades-long identities within carefully written Mafia epics.
There is another difficulty.
The original generation possessed a connection to a specific time and place: postwar New York, Newark, northern New Jersey, working-class Italian neighborhoods, old social clubs, parish life, and families still close to the immigrant experience.
That world is fading.
Many historic Italian neighborhoods have changed. Younger generations are more assimilated. Regional accents are becoming less pronounced. The old men who once sat outside neighborhood clubs are disappearing. The actors who observed them firsthand are disappearing with them.
Future performers can study the films.
They can learn the accents.
They can copy the gestures.
But they cannot recreate the exact world that produced De Niro, Pacino, Pesci, Sorvino, Sirico, Vincent, Pastore, Gandolfini, and the others.
Perhaps that is why this generation feels so irreplaceable.
They arrived at exactly the right moment.
They worked with Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Sergio Leone, Sidney Lumet, Barry Levinson, Abel Ferrara, Mike Newell, Quentin Tarantino, and David Chase.
They were not merely imitating an established genre.
They were inventing it.
My Final Thoughts
As editor of The Italian Californian, I spend a great deal of time writing about Italian-American history.
Usually, I am looking back many decades—or even centuries.
This feels different.
These are not distant historical figures.
These are the faces many of us grew up watching.
The voices we can imitate from memory.
The characters quoted at family gatherings, restaurants, workplaces, and among friends.
They were already famous when some of us were children. They remained present as we became adults. It seemed as though they would always be there, waiting inside another Scorsese film, another HBO series, another crime drama, or another late-night television interview.
But now the old crew is getting smaller.
Marlon Brando is gone.
John Cazale is gone.
James Caan is gone.
James Gandolfini is gone.
Frank Vincent is gone.
Tony Sirico is gone.
Paul Sorvino is gone.
Ray Liotta is gone.
Danny Aiello is gone.
Burt Young is gone.
And now Vincent Pastore is gone.
Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Dominic Chianese, Robert Duvall, Chazz Palminteri, Lorraine Bracco, and several others remain with us. Some still work. Some appear only occasionally. Their continued presence feels increasingly precious.
No generation lasts forever.
Actors grow older.
Cameras stop rolling.
The restaurants close.
The neighborhood changes.
The social club becomes an apartment building.
The voices that once filled the room become memories.
But few generations leave behind a legacy as unforgettable as this one.
As long as people watch The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Mean Streets, Once Upon a Time in America, Goodfellas, A Bronx Tale, Casino, Donnie Brasco, Gotti, The Irishman, and The Sopranos, these actors will never completely disappear.
Sonny will still charge toward the tollbooth.
Fredo will still insist that he is smart.
Jimmy Conway will still watch from the bar.
Tommy DeVito will still ask what is so funny.
Henry Hill will still take us through the kitchen at the Copacabana.
Paulie Cicero will still sit silently at the head of the table.
Tony Soprano will still walk down his driveway to collect the newspaper.
Paulie Walnuts will still complain.
Uncle Junior will still sing.
Big Pussy will still stand on the deck of that boat, facing the friends he betrayed.
Every time someone presses play, the doors open again.
The table is set.
The old neighborhood returns.
And for a few hours, at least, the family is back together.
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