Tony Sirico started acting in the 1970s after serving a number of prison sentences himself. He saw a performance by former prisoners and got the acting bug. Sirico has guest-starred in numerous series and films, mostly as a gangster, in series such as “Miami Vice” and “Kojak” and films such as “Goodfellas”, “Bullets over Broadway” and “Mickey Blue Eyes”. He achieved worldwide fame in the late 1990s when he was cast in “The Sopranos”, the groundbreaking HBO series about the Italian-American mafia in New Jersey.
In “The Sopranos”, Sirico played the role of Peter Paul “Paulie Walnuts” Gualtieri. A ruthless, but also eccentric and paranoid killer who struggled with, among other things, the apparitions of the Virgin Mary. According to him, they referred to his own death. Like the main character Tony Soprano (played by James Gandolfini), he goes to a therapist to learn how to deal with his fears.
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