Michael Gandolfini
Michael Gandolfini is an actor, born 1999.
The advice Michael Gandolfini got from his father was to become a director instead, on the grounds that directors have the power. Born in New York in 1999, he enjoyed performing as a teenager and was steered away from it; his father, James Gandolfini, died in 2013, when Michael was fourteen, and it was afterwards that he decided to act anyway. He enrolled at New York University, worked in television, and made his film debut in Ocean's 8.
Then came the assignment nobody sane would want. The Many Saints of Newark cast him as the teenage Tony Soprano, the character his father had played across the run of The Sopranos and which is, by fairly broad agreement, one of the two or three greatest performances in American television. He did not attempt an impression. He found the physical vocabulary, the tilt of the head, the weight, and then played a boy who has not decided anything yet, which is the only reading of the part that could have worked at all.
The more useful evidence is everything since, because none of it trades on the surname. He has assembled a proper supporting-actor career in serious films: Cherry, Beau Is Afraid, Landscape with Invisible Hand, Bob Marley: One Love, the war picture Warfare, and Daredevil: Born Again on television. The parts are small and the choices are consistently interesting, which at his age is a better sign than a run of leads.
Movies (10)
TV (3)
Where to start with Michael Gandolfini
Start with Warfare, which looks like a strange recommendation for an actor known for one piece of casting. It is a film with no interest in stardom, playing out close to real time, and he vanishes into a unit of soldiers, which is exactly the demonstration his career needed.
Then The Many Saints of Newark on its own terms rather than as an audition; it is a better film than its reputation suggests. Landscape with Invisible Hand is the most unusual thing he has been in, a science fiction satire almost nobody saw. Cat Person and Beau Is Afraid both use him in single sharp scenes. Cherry and Bob Marley: One Love are the mainstream credits, and Daredevil: Born Again is the ongoing one and the safest bet for seeing more of him soon.