Michael gandolfini

After a few brief appearances, he has drawn attention for playing Tony Soprano in his youth, the character immortalized by his father, the prematurely deceased James Gandolfini, in “Criminal Saints.” But Michael Gandolfini has a projection, since he is already being offered other roles in first-rate projects.

Born on May 10, 1999 in New York, Michael Gandolfini grew up hoping to follow in his father’s footsteps as an actor. But his father advised him against this path, because he thought that he offered more chances of failure than success, so he always encouraged the boy to take up sports, or in any case end up becoming a filmmaker. “He told me that they have the power,” he recalls. Despite everything, he insisted on asking her questions about how to embody various characters. “He always told me that he was not my acting teacher, but my father, something that I am very grateful for now, and remember fondly.”

He was only 14 years old when his father died of a heart attack in Rome on June 19, 2013. The boy never got out of his mind to fulfill his dream of dedicating himself to acting, so he enrolled in Drama at the University from New York. After brief appearances in Down the Shore , where he appears as an extra in a corner, and in Ocean’s 8 , where he is not seen much either, as a boy on a bus,  Michael Gandolfini lands his first major role in The Deuce (The Times Square Chronicles ) , where he gives life to Joey Dwyer, nephew of the twin brothers played by James Franco .

His big break comes when his agent insists that he audition to play Tony Soprano, his father’s best-known character, in Criminal Saints in his youth. A Sopranos story , prequel to the prestigious HBO series. “I had not seen the series. In life, my father would not let me, because he insisted that she was too violent, and I was still very young. After his death, I felt unable to see him on the screen”, recalls Michael Gandolfini . “To prepare the casting, I watched the first season. It was hard to see my father, but I recorded four hours of his dialogue and I would walk around New York with him constantly talking in my ears.

He thought that David Chase , creator of fiction, would never choose him. However, three months after the audition, they contacted him to let him know that he would play the part. Then,  Michael Gandolfini finished with a jerk with the rest of the chapters. “The Tony Soprano we know has this beautiful inner vulnerability and outer toughness, but what if we flip him around and you see a kind, hopeful, creative guy become what he was meant to be?” he explains of the role of the.

After filming, he was cast to share the screen with Tom Holland in Cherry , the Russo brothers’ adaptation of Nico Walker ‘s book . On this occasion, he plays a small town boy, who receives a visit from his best friend, who turns out to be a bank robber. “It was a gift to be given the opportunity to not play the typical New York kid of Italian descent,” says Michael Gandolfini .