James Gandolfini (and Tony Soprano) would have hated this biography

James Gandolfini is best known for playing a single character: Tony Soprano, the bearish New Jersey gangster at the heart of HBO’s massively popular series “The Sopranos.” But Jason Bailey’s come-to-Jimmy moment came much earlier, when he saw the 1993 crime caper “True Romance.” Directed by Tony Scott and written by an up-and-comer named Quentin Tarantino, that movie featured Gandolfini in a small but memorable role as Virgil, a thug who beats up Patricia Arquette’s Alabama.

Bailey, the author of the new biography “Gandolfini,” was struck by what he now calls “the tension between seemingly incompatible parts” within the actor. Virgil is vicious and terrifying, and, as Bailey puts it in an interview, “There is no quicker shorthand for a scumbag than someone who is beating up a defenseless woman.” But there’s something in the performance that suggests more than another garden-variety monster. “Within that scene, which could be just an absolutely brutal slog, he finds these moments of levity and eccentricity,” Bailey said. “The fact that he can put across those nuances and those incongruities in so little screen time, that’s a really special actor. That’s the scene, that’s the performance, that’s the actor that you remember, the one that you went in never having heard of.”

Soon, of course, everyone would hear of him. “The Sopranos” became an immediate cultural phenomenon when it premiered in January 1999, a Mafia drama with unusual depths of character development and narrative vigor. The series helped launch a new Golden Age of Television. And Gandolfini, who died of a heart attack in 2013 at age 51, was the show’s tempestuous soul, playing a loutish killer with a quick temper and sad eyes. Separating Gandolfini from Tony Soprano might seem as futile as separating Carroll O’Connor from Archie Bunker or Mary Tyler Moore from Mary Richards. The tension between Gandolfini, the actor, and Tony, the character, was often hard for the star to live with.

(Abrams Press)

Bailey, whose previous book subjects include “Pulp Fiction” and Richard Pryor, knows “The Sopranos” is the reason why most readers would be drawn to a book about Gandolfini, and his biography spends ample time and space on the series. Among those he interviewed were series regulars Edie Falco, Steven Van Zandt, Vincent Pastore and Robert Iler. All clearly loved Gandolfini; they also readily admit that his demons, including his alcoholism, could make life on the set difficult (Gandolfini’s disappearances and no-shows often threw production into turmoil).

But Bailey was also eager to show another side of Gandolfini: a hard-driving, obsessive character actor who fretted over line memorization and sought out projects and roles that cut against what naturally became a tough-guy persona. For Bailey, the most emblematic of these is “Enough Said” (2013), Nicole Holofcener’s bittersweet romantic comedy starring Gandolfini opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Many people Bailey interviewed said his character in the film, Albert, is similar in spirit to the real Gandolfini.

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“That’s the closest he ever got to his actual real personality onscreen,” Bailey said. “Jim was like a bearded hippie, goofball, warmhearted teddy bear in Birkenstocks. It’s such a charming performance that shows his range. You can’t get further from Tony Soprano than Albert in ‘Enough Said.’ The fact that it took his entire life to get to a point where he felt that comfortable sharing that much of himself in a role really does speak to the tragedy of losing him when we did.”

Some of Gandolfini’s choices would become the source of ironic humor. Gandolfini felt uneasy about the idea of playing mafioso “Sammy the Bull” Gravano in the 1996 HBO movie “Gotti,” but he took the part anyway. Then, at the last minute, he backed out. He didn’t want to play any more Mafia guys (irony No. 1). Executive producer Gary Lucchesi was irate. As Bailey reports, Lucchesi swore “he would blackball Gandolfini,” and he “would never work in the film industry again. And he’d certainly never work for HBO” (irony No. 2).

The Gandolfini described in the book could be hot-tempered and unpredictable, but most who worked with him remember an extremely generous man, with both his money — he would often spring for parties and lavish dinners for his “Sopranos” family — and a well-timed compliment. “He was a big, lovable mother—,” Drea de Matteo, who played Adriana on “The Sopranos,” told Bailey. “He was a big, lovable, insanely talented man.”

Not that he ever wanted to hear that. He could dish out compliments, but he was often too insecure to take them. Bailey gives the last word on the matter to Iler, who played Tony’s son, Anthony Jr. “I hate to tell you: He’d probably hate your book,” Iler told Bailey. “Just because of how nice everyone is gonna be in it, and how much we’re gonna talk about how much we love him and how incredible he is. He’s so pissed right now.”

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