With a felonious past riddled with more than twenty arrests, it made sense that Brooklyn native Tony Sirico was often cast as gangsters. The actor can be seen in the Martin Scorsese masterpiece Goodfellas (1990); the crime comedy Mickey Blue Eyes (1990) with Hugh Grant; the John Landis horror flick Innocent Blood (1992); James Toback’s The Pick-up Artist (1987), Love & Money (1982) and Fingers (1978); the biopic Gotti (1996) with Armand Assante; the neo-noir drama Cop Land (1997) with Sylvester Stallone; the fantasy Hello Again (1987) with Gabriel Byrne; the rom-com Mob Queen (1998); and the Woody Allen movies Bullets over Broadway (1994), Mighty Aphrodite (1995), and Wonder Wheel (2017). Sirico also appeared in Allen’s comedies Everyone Says I Love You (1996), Deconstructing Harry (1997), and Café Society (2016). Yet he found his biggest success on the small screen thanks to The Sopranos (1999-2007). HBO’s critically acclaimed drama features James Gandolfini, Edie Falco, Michael Imperioli, Lorraine Bracco, and Sirico’s skin! No wonder the series won Primetime Emmys! As mobster Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri, the shirtless stud shows off his inked arms and hairy chest. Too bad we can’t see the rest. Since then, Tony could be seen on the Norwegian-American crime dramedy Lilyhammer (2013-2014) and heard on the animated sitcoms Family Guy (2013-2016) and American Dad! (2017-2019). Unfortunately, the silver-haired fox passed away three weeks before his 80th birthday. If Mr. Man could make a wish for him, it would be to see Tony (and his fab flesh) on screen once again.
