Paul Sorvino, the celebrated character actor best known for his roles in Law & Order and Goodfellas, has died. He was 83 years old. According to a statement from Sorvino’s wife, the actor died from natural causes. In addition to his decades of stage and screen roles, Sorvino is known as the father of Mira Sorvino, the Academy Award-winning actress behind movies like Mighty Aphrodite and Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. Sorvino continued to work right up to the end, and according to his IMDb profile, has three feature films already shot and yet to be released.
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Over his long career, Sorvino played a wide variety of characters in everything from stage shows and serious dramas to oddities like Repo! The Generic Opera and Hey Arnold! The Movie. In 1981, Sorvino played a founder of the American Communist Party in Warren Beatty’s Reds (1981), starting a relationship that would pay dividends for years; the pair would reteam on Dick Tracy, Bulworth, and 2016’s Rules Don’t Apply.
Beatty, and Goodfellas’s Martin Scorsese, are hardly the only acclaimed directors to seek Sorvino out. Among his many credits, he played Juliet’s father in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Oliver Stone’s Nixon.
“Our hearts are broken, there will never be another Paul Sorvino, he was the love of my life, and one of the greatest performers to ever grace the screen and stage,” said Sorvino’s wife, Dee Dee, in a statement obtained by THR.
On the comic book side, Sorvino played the role of Lips Manlis in Beatty’s Dick Tracy (and, like almost everyone in that movie, was buried under such heavy makeup that he is hardly recognizable). He also played the role of Eddie Valentine in the stylish cult classic The Rocketeer.
While Sorvino appeared on only one season of Law & Order, he left a mark, playing the hard-edged Detective Phil Cerretta, the partner of Chris Noth’s Mike Logan, during his stint on the long-running series.
In 1973, Sorvino earned a Tony nomination and a Drama Desk Award for his performance as Phil Romano in the original Broadway production of Jason Miller’s That Championship Season, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama. He would reprise the role in 1982 for a feature film, and then would play the coach in 1999 in a TV-movie version, which Sorvino also directed.
Our condolences go out to Mr. Sorvino’s family, friends, fans, and collaborators during this difficult time.
