Paul Sorvino, a commanding actor who excelled at portraying criminals and law enforcement officials such as NYPD sergeant Phil Cerretta on “Law & Order” and Paulie Cicero in “Goodfellas,” has passed away. He was 83.
By natural causes, according to his spokesman Roger Neal, he passed away in Indiana on Monday morning.
In his more than 50 years in the entertainment industry, Sorvino was a mainstay in movies and television, portraying a mob boss in “The Rocketeer,” Henry Kissinger in Oliver Stone’s “Nixon,” and an Italian American communist in Warren Beatty’s “Reds.”
He would frequently claim that although he was perhaps most known for his roles as gangsters, his true loves were opera, poetry, and painting.
Sorvino was musically inclined from a young age and attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York where he fell in love with the theater.
He was born in Brooklyn in 1939 to a mother who taught piano and a father who worked as a foreman at a garment factory.
In 1964, he made his Broadway debut in “Bajour,” and in 1970, he made his film debut in Carl Reiner’s “Where’s Poppa?”