Vincent Pastore, the Bronx-born actor who portrayed Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero, the mob informant who winds up sleeping with the fishes, quite literally, on The Sopranos, has died. He was 80.
Pastore was found dead by Steve Villano, the actor’s self-described “right-hand man,” in his Bronx home on Saturday, he told The Hollywood Reporter. He apparently died in his sleep, he added.
The son of a real-life wiseguy, he said, Pastore made a living running and owning bars and nightclubs for two decades and didn’t get into acting until he was 42. Yet by the time he was done, he had appeared in nearly 200 movies and TV projects — most often as an Italian American bad guy — and twice in singing roles on Broadway.
After landing bit parts in films including Martin Scorsese‘s GoodFellas (1990) and Brian De Palma‘s Carlito’s Way (1993), Pastore was impressive as the right-hand man of Alan Arkin‘s mob boss in the comedy The Jerky Boys (1995) and as the caporegime Angelo Ruggiero opposite Armand Assante in the acclaimed 1996 HBO telefilm Gotti.
Sopranos creator David Chase hired him for the role of Sal — the character wasn’t even known as Big Pussy yet — soon after he auditioned for the HBO drama in 1998. It came down to Pastore and Johnny “Roast Beef” Williams, the actor recalled in 2022 on Chazz Palminteri’s podcast.
The gregarious Pastore said he “did his research” and discovered that “Big Pussy was a real guy in Jersey. He was tall and thin, out of Newark, he was friends with Frankie Valli, and there was a Little Pussy, [who] wound up being the rat in the family,” he noted. Why was the guy nicknamed Big Pussy? “Because he was a cat burglar, like Cary Grant,” Pastore said.
After Sal gets nabbed by the FBI on The Sopranos, he chooses to become an informer to avoid life in prison. He is soon sniffed out, however, and his fate is sealed when he appears to Tony (James Gandolfini) as a talking fish in a dream.
On the second-season finale, “Funhouse,” Sal is gunned down on a boat by Tony, Paulie (Tony Sirico) and Silvio (Steven Van Zandt) and dumped overboard. Pastore, who had appeared in 21 of the show’s first 26 episodes, was extremely popular with viewers; he would show up four more times in flashbacks or dreams through the series’ 2007 conclusion.
Even though he was no longer on one of TV’s hottest shows after getting whacked, he said he looked at the bright side as he was flying to Los Angeles for the first time to make a movie, Deuces Wild (2002). “I was 50 years old … and I’m on a plane and I’m going to work,” he told Palminteri.
Vincent Pastore with Sopranos castmate Tony Sirico in 2012.
Eric Reichbaum/Everett Collection
Pastore was born in the Bronx on July 14, 1946. His father, John, was a bookmaker who had to give up that business in order to get married — the family of his future wife Natalie insisted — but resumed making loans when he retired from his job as a school custodian. The family lived in an apartment above a social club in New Rochelle, New York.
After graduating from New Rochelle High School in 1964, Pastore enlisted and spent three years in the U.S. Navy and attended Pace University, where he switched his major from business to drama. But when he couldn’t find acting work, he focused on the club business around New York, starting in 1967. (He owned the Crazy Horse in New Rochelle and also drove a limo.)
One night, actor brothers Matt Dillon and Kevin Dillon were at a place with him while The Pope of Greenwich Village was playing on the TV. “Matty said, ‘You could do the work that these guys are doing,’ pointing to [future Sopranos co-star] Frank Vincent and Tony Musante,” he remembered.
Pastore was hired to appear in the Sylvester Stallone-starring Gangster, directed by William Friedkin, but the project never went forward. He then made his professional acting debut in True Love (1989), starring Annabella Sciorra and Aida Turturro. Casting director Ellen Lewis saw him in that and put him in GoodFellas, and he was in Penny Marshall‘s Awakenings in 1990, too.
Pastore worked for Marshall again in Riding in Cars With Boys (2001) and with other top directors in Woody Allen’s Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), Andrew Bergman’s It Could Happen to You (1994), Scott Kalvert’s The Basketball Diaries (1995), Sidney Lumet’s Night Falls on Manhattan (1996), Jim Abrahams‘ Jane Austen’s Mafia! (1998), Norman Jewison‘s The Hurricane (1999), Jon Favreau‘s Made (2001), Guy Ritchie‘s Revolver (2005) and Luc Besson‘s The Family (2013).
He was a leading man in the indies A Tale of Two Pizzas (2003), Heaven’s Messenger (2008), Dough Boys (2008) and Pizza With Bullets (2010) and still active recently, with a turn in the Neil Bogart biopic Spinning Gold (2023).
On the small screen, Pastore sparkled in the 1997 CBS miniseries The Last Don, starring Danny Aiello, and showed up on everything from Law & Order, The Practice and Everybody Hates Chris to Blue Bloods, The Neighborhood, Gravesend and the soap operas One Life to Live and General Hospital.
He participated in 2007 on Dancing with the Stars but withdrew after a week; was a contestant in 2008 on Celebrity Apprentice; pitched a product that holds money, a “Broccoli Wad,” in 2011 on Shark Tank; launched his own brand of tomato sauce; played in a rock band; had a podcast, Fuhgeddaboudit With Vinny Pastore; and toured around the world with Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa in Talking Sopranos.
Pastore did lots of stage work, and on Broadway he played Amos Hart in the 2007-08 revival of Chicago and the mob kingpin Nick Valenti in 2014 in Bullets Over Broadway. He studied acting at the HB Studios coming up and in recent years taught a workshop there.
In 2014, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Survivors include his daughter, Renee; a sister, Sally; and a brother, Johnny.