Actor Vincent Pastore, best known for his iconic portrayal of mobster Salvatore ‘Big Pu**y’ Bonpensiero on HBO’s The Sopranos, has died at age 80.
He had not been heard from for three days before a neighbor discovered his body at his home in the Bronx. An investigation is now underway, according to Deadline.
Pastore was beloved by fans of The Sopranos for his nuanced performance as ‘Big Pu**y,’ who is ultimately revealed to be an FBI informant and shot.
Born in 1946 to an Italian family in the Bronx, he was often cast in mafia roles, including a bit part in GoodFellas and a larger role in the 1996 HBO film Gotti.
His television career included frequent guest shots on Law & Order, as well as reality shows ranging from Celebrity Apprentice to Dancing with the Stars.
In his later years, he ran a theater company that produced multiple plays a year and reunited him with a number of The Sopranos alumni, including Anthony Ribustello, who featured as the chauffer of James Gandolfini’s lead character Tony Soprano.
The Daily Mail has contacted the New York City Police Department and the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for comment.
Actor Vincent Pastore, best known for his iconic portrayal of mobster Salvatore ‘Big Pu**y’ Bonpensiero on HBO’s The Sopranos, has died at age 80; pictured 2006
Pastore is pictured (right) with (from left) Tony Sirico, Steven Van Zandt, James Gandolfini and Michael Imperioli in a publicity still for The Sopranos
Pastore was born in the Bronx in 1946 but raised upstate in an Italian neighborhood of New Rochelle, living with his family above the local Foresters club.
‘I can still smell the pizza!’ he fondly remarked a few years ago to Edge magazine. ‘Roller skating every Friday night at the Boys Club. Great memories.’
Although he came across ‘bookies and loan sharks’ as a child and acknowledged that many fans ‘think I grew up with’ the ‘kinds’ of insalubrious characters he later played, he insisted he ‘grew up in a pure Italian-American home. Tradition.’
After serving in the US Navy in the Vietnam War, he began opening bars and clubs, including the 1980s New Rochelle nightspot the Crazy Horse.
However he had long nurtured dreams of acting, having even obtained a drama degree at Pace University, and in the late 1980s he began pursuing them.
A stroke of luck arrived when he was working as a New York City limousine driver and thus became acquainted with Kevin Dillon and his brother Matt Dillon.
‘I told them about my dreams of becoming an actor. They ended up seeing me at this community theater I was doing, and Kevin helped me out. He gave me the direction I needed to finally act,’ Pastore remembered.
After jobbing around with small roles in mob movies like GoodFellas and Carlito’s Way, Pastore landed a major supporting role in the 1995 crime comedy The Jerky Boys: The Movie as the adjutant of a mob boss played by Alan Arkin.
By the next year, he had earned his breakthrough part on HBO as the real-life Gambino family capo Angelo ‘Quack Quack’ Ruggiero in Gotti, with Armand Assante in the title role in a cast that also featured Anthony Quinn.
Pastore’s co-stars in that TV film included Tony Sirico, Dominic Chianese and Frank Vincent, all of whom went on to become colleagues of his on The Sopranos.
He later described Gotti as a ‘turning point’ in his career that led to his being recognized in the street and ultimately cast on The Sopranos, via Cryptic Rock.
Big Pu**y was one of Tony Soprano’s best friends, a prized member of the mob boss’s inner circle including Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico), Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) and Silvio Dante (Steve Van Zandt).
One of the key plot threads of the first two seasons is Big Pu**y’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt to conceal the fact he has become an FBI informant.
Pastore drew praise for his searing portrayal of a ‘rat’ who is wracked with guilt until his betrayal is discovered and he is shot dead by Tony, Silvio and Paulie.
Several years later, Pastore revealed one of his iconic scenes – when Tony furiously searches Big Pu**y for a wire – was born of an improvisation by Gandolfini.
‘We were scripted on Sopranos, but you don’t know the moment he’s going to come in whether he’s going to be mad at you,’ said Pastore.
‘In the scene when he was frisking me down in the basement of the house in Episode One, Season Two, he’s really frisking me. I didn’t know he was going to do that.’
Pastore took a dim view of the unflattering remarks Gandolfini’s colleagues made about him after his death of a heart attack aged 51 in 2013.
In the 2024 documentary Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos, Gandolfini was accused of having had a fiery temperament and drinking so heavily that the head of HBO tried to persuade him to go to rehab, only for him to retort: ‘Fire me!’
His commitment to method acting was said to have been so intense he would stay awake for days on end and get himself ‘angry’ by walking with rocks in his shoes.
The Sopranos creator David Chase remarked that Gandolfini ‘had to go places that were destructive to him, and painful for him’ for the role.
Pastore, on the other hand, said: ‘People talk bad about Jimmy. I saw it in that documentary. I didn’t dig it, man. Jimmy was tired. He was carrying the weight for seven years. Without Jimmy, there would have been no Sopranos. I’m sorry.’
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