On screen, Tony Soprano was a man crushed between therapy sessions and mob hits, family dinners and panic attacks. Off screen, James Gandolfini was living a different version of the same tug-of-war — one where fame, addiction and pressure pulled at him from every side.
When became a phenomenon, Gandolfini didn’t step into easy movie-star comfort. He stepped into a job that frightened him. He once said that working with creator David Chase had taught him “a great deal about depression and about anger,” and that he would go home still thinking about those things.
Physically, the role took a visible toll. Gandolfini steadily gained weight over the show’s 86 episodes, and later acknowledged how much his size and health worried him.
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