Vincent Pastore, 'Big Pussy' in The Sopranos, Dies at 80

The character actor Vincent Pastore, who has died aged 80, made Italian mobster roles his speciality, most notably playing Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero, one of the capos in The Sopranos. Although the character’s nickname came from his early career as a cat burglar, in a recent interview Pastore said the Soprano’s creator, David Chase, had written the part “for an actor who could play a tough guy but also could be sensitive. I saw Big Pussy as a man with a big heart.”

In the show, Pastore’s Pussy balanced the violent intensity of Tony Sirico’s Paulie Walnuts. “It was like sharing the camera with an elephant,” Pastore joked about the much smaller but intense actor.

One of The Sopranos’ most touching, if surreal, moments was centred on Pussy – and his demise. This came in the finale of series two, when Tony Soprano (played by James Gandolfini), in a fever dream while suffering food poisoning, realises who has been ratting the family out. Pussy, speaking to him as an eight-pound fish selling for four dollars a pound, confesses to Tony, and points out that the fish next to him are “sleeping”. As Pastore’s voice speaks, Tony says, “Don’t even say that,” as he realises agonisingly he will have to make Pussy sleep with the fishes too. The episode ends with Tony and two others (including a vengeful Paulie) shooting Pussy on Tony’s boat and tossing his body overboard.

Pastore himself was born in the Bronx, but grew up in what he described as the “true Italian” neighbourhood in the Westchester suburb of New Rochelle, in New York, where his father, John, was a school caretaker and his mother, Natalie (nee Santadonata), cooked part-time for the Italian men’s social club over which they lived. It was not a mob setting. “We saw bookies and loan sharks, but to play these parts you don’t rely on memories,” he said. “You use your own personality.”

After high school, during the Vietnam war, he enlisted in the US navy, then studied drama at the Westchester campus of Pace University. He worked as a bouncer in nightclubs, and as a limo driver, eventually buying his own club in New Rochelle. His first break came when he drove the actors Matt and Kevin Dillon, also from Westchester. They came to his club, saw him in local theatre, and were impressed. Kevin offered support, but as Pastore began to land roles, the actor Danny Aiello became his mentor.

In 1988 he made his film debut in the Canadian horror movie Black Roses. He played small parts in films, some of them very good, almost all of them involving crime. Between 1990 and 1995 he was in 15 movies, including an uncredited part in Sidney Lumet’s Q&A.

But the nature of his parts are reflected in his billing: “Man With Coat-rack” in Goodfellas, “Fat Tony” in Backstreet Dreams, “Tony Clams” in Who’s the Man, and “Copa Wiseguy” – from the Copacabana nightclub – in Carlito’s Way. His TV debut came in 1990, on the short-lived combined emergency services show H.E.L.P. with John Mahoney and Wesley Snipes. Like many New York actors, including other Sopranos cast members, he played in four episodes of Law and Order. Pastore’s breakthrough role came in a comedy crime vehicle, The Jerky Boys (1995), as Tony Scarboni, right-hand man to Alan Arkin’s crime boss, who is crossed by the eponymous comedians.

In 1996, he played a similar role in the HBO film Gotti, playing Angelo Ruggerio, the loyal No 2 to the New York crime boss John Gotti, played by Armand Assante, with whom he had worked on Q&A.

In 1997 he acted with Aiello in A Brooklyn State of Mind (with the future Sopranos cast member Jamie-Lynn Sigler), and in 1999 he was in the Hugh Grant comedy Mickey Blue Eyes.

The Sopranos debuted the same year, and in 2000 he won a Screen Actors Guild award for outstanding performance in an ensemble drama. Though Big Pussy was killed off at the end of season two, his career took new turns.

He had participated as a celebrity on the quiz comedy Hollywood Squares, but was soon in demand on the reality TV circuit. He was the host of Repo Men: Stealing for a Living, and lost 13kg on Celebrity Fit Club. He withdrew from Dancing With the Stars after a week, but his time on Celebrity Apprentice was marked by a feud with Piers Morgan. “Reality producers … to bring out the best or worst … place you in a bad improvisation scene with someone you genuinely don’t like,” he said.

In 2007 he made his Broadway debut in Chicago; the following year he also joined the cast of the daytime soap opera General Hospital. Pastore longed to do comedy; in 2009’s Oy Vey! My Son Is Gay! he was the father of the Italian boyfriend whose Jewish partner’s parents are more worried their son is with a non-Jewish boy than that he is gay.

Still he was landing roles such as “Don Vito Perspirino” in Pizza With Bullets (2010) or “Amadore Condimento” in Made in Chinatown (2021). He returned to Broadway in Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway: The Musical in 2014, and that year led the Columbus Day parade in the Bronx.

He played recurring parts in Hawaii 5-0, Wu-Tang: An American Saga, and Gravesend, and had another leading role in the 2022 film The Black Caesar. He started a theatre company in 2021; his revival of the play Lamp Post Reunion starred Aiello. A new film, Bad News on the Doorstep, starring Chazz Palmintieri, Robert Davi, their sons Dante and Nick, respectively, and Sylvester Stallone’s daughter Sistine, has yet to be released.

Pastore lived alone in City Island in the Bronx. His marriage to Nancy Berke ended in divorce; he is survived by their daughter, Renee.