James Joseph Gandolfini Jr.

 James Joseph Gandolfini Jr. (September 18, 1961 – June 19, 2013)

He was best known for his role as Tony Soprano, an Italian-American crime boss, in the HBO crime drama The Sopranos. He garnered enormous praise for his performance, winning three Emmy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and one Golden Globe Award. His other notable roles included mob henchman Virgil in True Romance (1993), enforcer and stuntman Bear in Get Shorty (1995) and impulsive "Wild Thing" Carol in Where the Wild Things Are (2009). For his performance as Albert in Enough Said (2013), Gandolfini posthumously received much critical praise and several accolades, including a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination and the Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor. After finishing The Sopranos, Gandolfini produced the documentary Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq (2007), in which he interviewed injured Iraq War veterans. His second documentary, Wartorn: 1861–2010 (2010), analyzed the impact of post-traumatic stress disorder on soldiers and families throughout several wars in American history from 1861 to 2010.

Gandolfini died at the age of 51 in Rome on June 19, 2013. He was expected to travel to Sicily a few days later to receive an award at the Taormina Film Fest. After he and his family had spent a day of sightseeing in sweltering heat, his thirteen-year-old son Michael discovered him unconscious at around 10 pm local time, on the bathroom floor at the Boscolo Exedra Hotel in the Piazza della Repubblica. He called reception, who in turn called emergency paramedics. Gandolfini reportedly arrived at the hospital at 10:40 pm and was pronounced dead at 11 pm. An autopsy confirmed that he had died of a heart attack.