James Gandolfini Quotes

1. I love doing theaters, cracking people up, hearing them physically roll in the aisles. But we need to get serious. These are serious times. No joke. No joke.


2. I lost 30 pounds to play my character in "The Mexican", but people don't take to skinny mafia men, and I don't feel right when I'm thin.

3. I was voted best-looking kid in high school but, as you can see, things changed. I used to say I was a 260 pound Woody Allen. You can make that 295 pound now.



4. Actors will say: "My character wouldn't say that." Who said it was your character?

5. What they say about TV shows is true. You're really a family. You laugh, you fight, you get close, you know? Movies are shorter. They're over quicker. You don't form the same bonds.

6. You know, all writers are vampires and they'll look around and they watch you when you're not even thinking they're watching you and they'll slip stuff in.

7. I'm a neurotic mess. I'm really basically just like a 260-pound Woody Allen.

8. Both my mother and father were very supportive of any career move any of us wanted to make.





9. (on his reaction to "The Sopranos" pilot script) I thought, I've never been the lead before. They're gonna hire somebody else. But I knew I could do it. I have small amounts of Mr. Soprano in me. I was 35, a lunatic, a madman.

10. Good writing will bring you to places you don't even expect sometimes.



11. Like I always say, I'm standing on my parents' shoulders; they allowed me to do this silly job.


12. I find it hard to relax. I live in New York.

13. Alan Alda was with "M*A*S*H" (1972) so long, and now you see him, that's not there that much anymore. In my mind, you work hard, you'll be fine. Everybody's got their baggage.

14. I don't think I will do a Mafia character again. I want to get away from the violence a little bit, because it is starting to bother me personally.




15. (about Tony Soprano, his character on "Sopranos" 1999) I never think about him, ever.

16. I like dark places.

17. I watch stupid comedies. Role Models (2008). I love them. The Rocker (2008). I love that. I like idiotic comedies.

18. I like idiotic comedies.

19. (on the final episode of "Sopranos" 1999) When I first saw the ending, I said: "What the f...?" I mean, after all I went through, all this death, and then it's over like that? But after I had a day to sleep, I just sat there and said: "That's perfect."

20. I have nothing but respect for HBO.

21. (on his "Sopranos" (1999) co-star, Edie Falco) I'm still in love with Edie. And, of course, I love my wife, but I'm in love with Edie. I don't know if I'm in love with Carmela or Edie or both. I'm in love with her.

22. I love hearing people laugh.


23. I'm much more comfortable doing smaller things. I like them. I like the way they're shot; they're shot quickly.

24. I'd love to live in New Orleans. I love the freedom of it - for good and for bad.

25. (on the "Sopranos" project) I read it. I liked it. I thought it was good. But I thought they would have to hire some good-looking guy, not George Clooney but some Italian George Clooney, and that would be that. But they called me and they said can I meet David (Chase) for breakfast at nine a.m. At the time I was younger and I stayed out late a lot, and I was like: "Oh, for f...'s sake. This guy wants to eat breakfast? This guy's going to be a pain in the ass".

26. I want nothing to do with privilege.

27. I think you cared about Tony because David was smart enough to write the Greek chorus through Dr. Melfi. So you sat there and you got to see his motives, what he was thinking, what he was trying to do, what he was trying to fix, what he was trying to become. And then you saw it didn't really work out the way he wanted it to. If you took the Melfi scenes away, you wouldn't care about this man as much, or care about anything that was happening to him.

28. I'm an angry guy.

29. We'd get accused, back then, of glamorizing mobsters, but we were all half miserable you know. I don't think the violence looks appealing at all. Everybody paid for it in a lot of ways. I heard sometimes that we were making cute, cuddly mobsters, but i know for a fact that David wrote an incredibly violent episode - the one where there's a stripper that Ralph Cifaretto beats to death - and I think that was written as a reaction to that. It's a very violent world and, you know, there's consequences. I think we showed it, and I think we showed the toll it takes on people.

30. I'm not a big, three-hour-play, Ibsen-revival kind of man.

31. (on David Chase and the challenges of "The Sopranos") By the end, I had a lot of anger over things and I think it was just from being tired, and what in God's name would I have to be angry about? The man gave me such a gift in terms of life experience, in terms of acting experience, in terms of money too. At the beginning, David came to the set a lot, but once it got bigger and it became this thing, you know, he was a little more standoffish. He was harder to talk to. I understand that. The pressure that he had to continue to create, to continue to do great work, was hard. Everybody starts to want something, everybody starts to call, and this one needs this, and can we talk about that? And then there's money, and so you have to pull back and try to protect yourself in a way. I had to learn it and I wasn't very good at it. But then it starts to take its toll. The first couple of years it was easier. It wasn't such a huge deal. I've said this to him, but maybe not so clearly. I got it. He had to be a little bit of the Great and Powerful Oz. There was no choice.

32. I'm an actor…I do a job and I go home. Why are you interested in me? You don't ask a truck driver about his job.





33. I've been very lucky, considering what I look like and what I do.

34. Part of the fun of acting is the research, finding out about other people.

35. It is a dark, dark world. If you're going to be in a dark world, I can't think of any better one to be in. I still think I'm very lucky to be in it.




36. People don't know and they shouldn't know that you work incredibly hard as an actor.

37. People don't know and they shouldn't know that you work incredibly hard as an actor.

38. Putting somebody else's pants on and pretending to be somebody else is occasionally, as you grow older, horrifying.




39. Standing in public in other people's clothes, pretending to be someone else. It's a strange way for a grown man to make a living.

40.  "The Sopranos" all came down to the writing. I wouldn't have been on for as long as I was if the writing weren't so good.





41. I dabbled a little bit in acting in high school, and then I forgot about it completely. And then at about 25 I went to a class. I don't think anybody in my family thought it was an intelligent choice. I don't think anybody thought I'd succeed, which is understandable. I think they were just happy that I was doing something.

42. I just don't think I'm that interesting. I don't think what I have to say is that interesting. To hear me go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, who…cares?


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