Paul Sorvino, an actor who specialized in playing crooks and cops like Paulie Cicero in “Goodfellas” and the New York Police Sgt. Phil Cerreta on “Law & Order,” has died at 83.
His publicist, Roger Neal, said he died Monday of natural causes at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla.
Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino, his daughter, wrote a tribute on Twitter: “My father, the great Paul Sorvino, has passed. … I’m sending you love in the stars, Dad, as you ascend.” In his more than 50 years in the entertainment business, Sorvino was a mainstay in films and television, playing an Italian American communist in Warren Beatty’s “Reds,” Henry Kissinger in Oliver Stone’s “Nixon” and mob boss Eddie Valentine in “The Rocketeer.” Born in Brooklyn in 1939 to a mother who taught piano and a father who was a foreman in a robe factory, Sorvino was musically inclined from a young age and attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York, where he fell for the theater. He made his Broadway debut in 1964 in “Bajour” and his film debut in Carl Reiner’s “Where’s Poppa?” in 1970.
With his 6-foot-4-inch stature, Sorvino was especially prolific in the 1990s, kicking off the decade by playing Lips in Beatty’s “Dick Tracy” and Paulie Cicero in Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas,” a character based on real-life mobster Paul Vario. He also appeared in 31 episodes of Dick Wolf’s “Law & Order.” He followed those with roles in “The Rocketeer” and “The Firm.” The movie “Nixon” earned him a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination, and he also appeared in Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet” as Juliet’s father, Fulgencio Capulet.
Sorvino had three children from his first marriage, including actor Mira Sorvino. He also directed and starred in a film written by his daughter Amanda Sorvino and featuring his son Michael Sorvino.
He wanted to be seen for more than what he was on screen and took particular pride in his singing. In 1996, “Paul Sorvino: An Evening of Song” was broadcast on television as part of a PBS fundraising campaign.
He also ran a horse rescue operation in Pennsylvania, had a grocery store pasta sauce line based on his mother’s recipe and sculpted a bronze statue of the late playwright Jason Miller in Scranton, Pa. Sorvino starred in Miller’s Tony- and Pulitzer-winning play “That Championship Season” on Broadway in 1972, which also got him a Tony nomination, as well as its film adaptation.
In 2014, he married political pundit Dee Dee Benkie and said a goal of his later life was to “disabuse people of the notion that I’m a slow-moving, heavy-lidded thug.” “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,” his wife said in a statement. She was by his side when he died.