Goodfellas actor Paul Sorvino dead at 83

Hollywood actor Paul Sorvino died unexpectedly at the age of 83, after having dealt with health issues over the past few years.

His publicist Roger Neal told DailyMail.com Sorvino died Monday morning in Indiana of natural causes. His wife of eight years, Dee Dee Benkie, was by his side. 

‘Our hearts are broken, there will never be another Paul Sorvino, he was the love of my life, and one of the greatest performers to ever grace the screen and stage,’ Benkie said in a statement.

In his over 50 years in the entertainment business, Sorvino was a mainstay in films and television. He would often say that while he might be best known for playing gangsters, his real passions were poetry, painting and opera.

The star was most famous for his role as Paul Cicero in the 1990 smash hit mobster movie Goodfellas with Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci.

He played an Italian American communist in Warren Beatty’s Reds, Henry Kissinger in Oliver Stone’s Nixon and mob boss Eddie Valentine in The Rocketeer. He also had a recurring part as Sergeant Phil Cerreta on the hit crime TV show Law & Order.

Sorvino is the latest movie mobster to pass away. His Goodfellas castmate Liotta, 67, died in his sleep in the Dominican Republic, where he was filming Dangerous Waters, in May. 

The Godfather star James Caan, who also appeared alongside Sorvino in The Gambler, died from a heart attack earlier this month at age 82.

A classic: The star was best known for his role as Paul Cicero in the 1990 smash hit mobster movie Goodfellas with Ray Liotta, who also died this year, and Robert De Niro. From left, Liotta, De Niro, Sorvino and Joe Pesci

His publicist Roger Neal said he died Monday morning in Indiana of natural causes. His wife of eight years, Dee Dee Benkie, was by his side. Sorvino and Benkie are pictured together

Benkie issued a statement saying she is ‘heartbroken’ after losing the ‘love of my life’

Born in Brooklyn in 1939 to a mother who taught piano and father who was a foreman in a robe factory, Sorvino was musically inclined from a young age and attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York where he fell for the theater. 

He made his Broadway debut in 1964 in Bajour and his film debut in Carl Reiner’s Where’s Poppa? in 1970.

With his 6-foot-4-inch stature, Sorvino made an impactful presence no matter the medium.  

In the 1970s, he acted alongside Al Pacino in The Panic in Needle Park and with James Caan in The Gambler, re-teamed with Reiner in Oh, God! and was among the ensemble in William Friedkin’s bank robbery comedy, The Brink’s Job.

In John G. Avildsen’s Rocky follow-up, Slow Dancing in the Big City, Sorvino got to play a romantic lead and use his dance training opposite professional ballerina Anne Ditchburn.

However, the actor has said that his road to on-screen success was challenging and that earlier on his acting gigs were elusive. He worked a waiter and bartender, sold cars and taught children’s acting lessons. 

‘Most of the time I was just another out-of-work actor who couldn’t get arrested,’ he told The New York Times in the 1972. ‘I had confidence in my ability, and I was angry as hell when other people didn’t recognize it.’

He even appeared in commercials for deodorant and tomato sauce. After the birth of his eldest child, Mira Sorvino, in 1967 he wrote advertising copy for nine months. The actor claimed the job gave him an ulcer.

Sorvino and Benkie are pictured during the filming of the 2019 film Welcome to Acapulco

Actor Paul Sorvino and his wife Dee Dee Benkie attend after party following the New York premiere of Mary Queen Of Scots at Paris Theater on December 4, 2018 in New York City

Bruce Willis, Paul Sorvino and Brynn Thayer are pictured on September 23, 1986

Benkie shared a photo of Sorvino on June 2, captioning her post: ‘You liberals who are talking about gun grabs. Try and come get our guns’

Sorvino married actress Lorraine Davis in 1966. The pair had three children together – including Academy Award-winning actress Mira Sorvino, who is best known for Romy & Michele’s High School reunion – before they divorced in 1988. 

He remarried in 1991 to real estate agent Vanessa Arico, but the pair separated about five years later in 1996. 

Sorvino seemed dedicated to his family, even directing and starring in a film written by his daughter Amanda Sorvino and featuring his son Michael Sorvino. 

He was proud of his children and cried when eldest Mira won the best supporting actress Oscar for Mighty Aphrodite in 1996. He the Los Angeles Times that night that he didn’t have the words to express how he felt.

‘They don’t exist in any language that I’ve ever heard – well, maybe Italian,’ he said of his daughter’s accomplishment.

Mira, 54, paid tribute to her late father on Monday, tweeting: ‘My father the great Paul Sorvino has passed. My heart is rent asunder- a life of love and joy and wisdom with him is over. He was the most wonderful father. I love him so much. I’m sending you love in the stars Dad as you ascend.’

In April, she wished him a happy 83rd birthday. ‘A very Happy Birthday to my father Paul Sorvino,’ she wrote on Twitter alongside a black and white throwback image of herself and her father.

‘I miss you so much and hope to be together in person very soon!’ the Barcelona star added.

Mira Sorvino posted a tribute to her late father on Monday: ‘A life of love and joy and wisdom with him is over’

Andy Buckley, Dee Dee Benkie, Paul Sorvino and Mira Sorvino are pictured together in February 2020

A famous daughter: In April Mira said happy 83rd birthday to her dad. ‘A very Happy Birthday to my father Paul Sorvino,’ Mira, 54, wrote on Twitter alongside a black and white throwback image of herself and her father. Seen in 2007

Paul Sorvino (center) is pictured with his first wife, Lorraine Davis (left) and their daughter Mira Sorvino (right) in December 1982 at Seventh Regiment Armory in New York City during the premiere of That Championship Season

When Sorvino learned that Mira had been among the women allegedly sexually harassed and blacklisted by Harvey Weinstein in the midst of the #MeToo reckoning, he told TMZ that if he had known, Weinstein, ‘Would not be walking. He’d be in a wheelchair.’ 

‘He better hope that he goes to jail. Because if we come across [each other] I think he will be lying on the floor’, Sorvino told the newsoutlet in 2018.

‘He’s gonna go to jail that son of a b****. And good for him if he goes, because if he not, he has to meet me.’

He then added: ‘And I will kill that motherf*****.’ 

Mira claimed Weinstein’s attempts to engage with her began in 1995, when she was promoting her role in Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite. He began to massage her shoulders while the two were alone in a hotel room at the Toronto Film Festival according to Mira, who said that he then tried to take things further but she was able to ward him off at the time.

When Sorvino learned that Mira had been among the women allegedly sexually harassed and blacklisted by Harvey Weinstein in the midst of the #MeToo reckoning, he told TMZ in 2018 that if he had known, Weinstein, ‘Would not be walking. He’d be in a wheelchair’

Chris Backus, Mira Sorvino and Harvey Weinstein are pictured at HBO’s Annual Pre-Golden Globes Party on January 14, 2006 in Los Angeles. Mira claimed Weinstein’s attempts to engage with her began in 1995, when she was promoting her role in Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite

A few weeks later he managed to bypass her doorman and make it up to her apartment around midnight, at which point she told him her boyfriend was on the way after calling a male friend to rush over.

Mira believes that this rejection of Weinstein ultimately hurt her career.

‘There may have been other factors, but I definitely felt iced out and that my rejection of Harvey had something to do with it,’ said the actress. 

Mira later added that her story ‘pales in comparison’ to some of the others.

Sorvino also revealed that he was unaware of Weinstein’s treatment of his daughter prior to her interview with The New Yorker in 2017.

After the actor issued his commentary to TMZ, publicly denouncing Weinstein and threatening his life, Mira took to Twitter: ‘My love for my father has only continued to grow since this moment. All the love in my heart!’ 

‘He is the most loving father, the most brilliant actor, the most beautiful operatic tenor, the most talented visual artist- the wisest and most human advice giver, & best Grandpa ever!!’

Sorvino married Benkie, a political pundit and Emmy Award Winner, in 2014 after a chance meeting on the Neil Cavuto show on Fox News.

‘She was sent to me by god, she was the love of my life, when I met her there was an aura of light around her head, I felt that was my mother telling me she is the one,’ he said of Benkie, with whom he co-authored the book Pinot, Pasta, and Parties.

He said that a goal of his later life was to ‘disabuse people of the notion that I’m a slow-moving, heavy-lidded thug.’

As with most who starred in Goodfellas, the image would follow him for the rest of his life which he had complex feelings about.

‘Most people think I’m either a gangster or a cop or something,’ he said. ‘The reality is I’m a sculptor, a painter, a best-selling author, many, many things – a poet, an opera singer, but none of them is gangster…. It would be nice to have my legacy more than that of just tough guy.’

Ray Liotta, Martin Scorcese and Paul Sorvino attend the screening of Goodfellas on September 17, 1990 at Mann Bruin Theater in Westwood, California

Sorvino is the latest movie mobster to pass away. His Goodfellas castmate Ray Liotta, 67, (left) died in his sleep in the Dominican Republic, where he was filming Dangerous Waters, in May. The Godfather star James Caan, (right) who also appeared alongside Sorvino in The Gambler, died from a heart attack earlier this month at age 82

Mira Sorvino, Amanda Sorvino, Charlie Korsmo, Paul Sorvino and his second wife, Vanessa Arico, are pictured together in June 1990

Paul Sorvino is pictured in the 1990 film Goodfellas

He also wanted to be seen for more than what he was on screen and took particular pride in his singing. In 1996, Paul Sorvino: An Evening of Song was broadcast on television as a part of a PBS fundraising campaign. 

Songs performed included Torna A Sorriento, Guaglione, O Sole Mio, The Impossible Dream and Mama.

‘I’m a pop singer in the sense Mario Lanza was,’ Sorvino said in an interview the Tampa Tribune. ‘It astonishes me that no American male singer sings with a full voice anymore. Where have all the tenors gone?’

The weight of his voice, he thought, made it difficult to train. He said: ‘It’s like trying to park a bus in a VW parking space.’

He also ran a horse rescue in Pennsylvania, had a grocery store pasta sauce line based on his mother’s recipe, and sculpted a bronze statue of the late playwright Jason Miller that resides in Scranton, Pennsylvania. 

Sorvino had starred in Miller’s Tony and Pulitzer-winning play That Championship Season on Broadway in 1972 and its film adaptation.