It’s hard to imagine Tony Soprano as a high school heartthrob, but long before he ruled New Jersey’s criminal underworld on TV, James Gandolfini was turning heads at Park Ridge High School. Yearbook photos show a strikingly handsome young man with an easy smile, voted “best looking” and “biggest flirt” by his classmates – quite different from the brooding mob boss he’d later portray.
Friends remember the young Gandolfini as having “a quiet confidence” that made him popular with both guys and girls. “He grinned with his eyes as well as his teeth,” one childhood friend recalled. This natural charisma would serve him well when he later discovered acting, first in high school theater productions, then professionally after graduating from Rutgers University.
The contrast between Gandolfini’s real personality and his most famous role was striking. Where Tony Soprano was volatile and violent, Gandolfini was known among colleagues as kind and self-deprecating. John Travolta, whose family knew Gandolfini from their New Jersey days, remembered him as “first and foremost a people person.” This duality made his performance as Tony Soprano all the more remarkable – he could convey both menace and vulnerability in a single scene.
