at 16:56 on April 3, 2007, EST.
By LEE-ANNE GOODMAN


Actor James Gandolfini attends the World Premiere of two new episodes of HBO's "The Sopranos" Tuesday at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. (AP Photo/Stephen Chernin)

TORONTO (CP) - There have been a litany of blood-soaked killings, a harrowing rape scene, adultery galore and even a hateful, elderly mother trying to arrange a hit on her own mob boss son.

Since it first exploded onto television screens eight years and 77 episodes ago, HBO's Mafia drama "The Sopranos" has provided some of the most memorably shocking moments ever to grace the small screen, from a knock-down, drag 'em out marital brawl between Tony and Carmela to the heartbreaking whacking of the guileless Adriana after she made the fatal mistake of talking to the feds.

Vanity Fair magazine calls "The Sopranos" the best show in television history, and its nine-episode final season is upon us, premiering Sunday night on the Movie Network at 9 p.m. ET and Movie Central at 8 p.m. PT.

The first episode might sound tame - Tony and Carmela Soprano head to the countryside to celebrate Tony's 47th birthday at Bobby and Janice's cottage on a pristine and peaceful lake in upstate New York near the Canadian border.

But some simmering family resentments soon turn a boozy Monopoly game into a hair-raising ride that's every bit the tense nail-biter viewers have come to expect from creator David Chase, who's based much of the familial tensions that are such a crucial part of "The Sopranos" on his own dysfunctional Italian upbringing.

"No one will be disappointed - it's going to be a great season," Michael Imperioli, who plays young mobster and heroin addict Christopher Moltisanti, said recently on the line from New York.

Imperioli was among the "Sopranos" cast members who were at New York's Radio City Music Hall last week for a screening of the first episode to kick off the final season. More than 30 actors from the show, including those who have already been whacked, were in attendance at the opulent farewell - many of them in tears.

"I am sad that it's ending; it's bittersweet," Imperioli says. "I have a very full sense of completeness because I got to do pretty much everything I could possibly do with this character and I had a great experience over the years with everybody I worked with. It's sad it's going to end but really, it couldn't have been better."

The final season is bountiful for Christopher, Imperioli says. After years of fruitless attempts, he finally gets his mob-themed slasher movie made. Instead of Ben Kingsley in the lead role - Christopher's attempt to snag the Oscar-winner was easily the funniest episode of last season - he gets Daniel Baldwin, one of the lesser-known members of Hollywood's Baldwin clan.

"It's great, very exciting - Christopher is starting off in a good place," says Imperioli. "A little bit of time has passed, and Christopher buys a big house with his new wife and he's got a little girl. He's making a go at being a normal suburban dad and husband."

Imperioli can't give much else away, but any "Sopranos" fan who's watched Christopher struggle to stay off the smack and out of trouble with Tony knows that life as a lawn-mowing soccer dad isn't likely in the cards for very long.

"It's not an easy life," Imperioli concedes, pointing to the wrenching demise of Christopher's onetime love, Adriana, played by Drea de Matteo.

At a panel discussion entitled "The Whacked Sopranos" held recently at New York's Museum of Television and Radio, both audience and cast members said Adriana's death upset them more than the dozens of others throughout the run of the series. Adriana was driven to a forest and shot by a flinty-eyed Silvio, played by Steve Van Zandt, as she desperately pleaded for her life.

Steve Buscemi, whose character was personally whacked by Tony Soprano for his own sins, told the panel that he wept when he saw Adriana go down.

"I really felt for her; it was devastating," Buscemi said.

It was difficult for Imperioli too, the actor confesses.

"That was really hard, not just because of what happened to her character but because I really missed her as an actress," he said. "We had a great time. We trusted each other a lot; I miss her a lot."

Death has certainly been a major co-star on "The Sopranos," and the final season, clearly, will be no exception. As Edie Falco, who's won three Emmys for her consistently brilliant run as Carmela, notes on the HBO website: "It's a mob show, you know, so people gotta get killed."

But the actors, as usual, are kept in the dark, only getting the scripts a couple of weeks in advance and rarely being told by the secretive Chase who's headed for the chopping block. Any pleas for mercy by the actors whose characters are slated to get whacked are reportedly met with utter indifference.

"We're all waiting for the next scripts to see how things are going to end up in the last few shows," Imperioli says. "We just don't know."

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'Sopranos' trivia

By The Canadian Press

Some trivia about cast members of "The Sopranos":

-Tony Sirico, who plays Paulie Walnuts, only agreed to sign on for the role if his character never turned out to be a "rat." Sirico served time in prison during the late 1960s and early '70s for holding up night clubs.

-Lorraine Bracco, who played the role of mob wife Karen Hill in "Goodfellas" - the film that "Sopranos" creator David Chase calls his Qur'an - was originally asked to play the role of Carmela Soprano. She took the role as Dr. Melfi because she felt it would be more challenging.

-Chase loved Drea de Matteo's acting and enthusiasm as a maitre d' in the series pilot so much that he made her a series regular.

-Steve Van Zandt (Silvio Dante) and David Proval (Richie Aprile) auditioned to play Tony Soprano. Ray Liotta was initially approached with the role of Tony, ahead of James Gandolfini, but turned it down because he wanted to focus on movies.

-Seven members of the "Sopranos" cast appeared in the film "Mickey Blue Eyes" in the same year that "The Sopranos" began: Tony Sirico (Paulie Walnuts), John Ventimiglia (Artie Bucco), Aida Turturro (Janice Soprano), Vincent Pastore (Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero), Frank Pellegrino (FBI chief Frank Cubitoso), Joseph R. Gannascoli (Vito Spatafore) and Tony Darrow (Larry).


©The Canadian Press, 2007

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James Gandolfini the actor hides behind Tony Soprano the character
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at 16:55 on April 3, 2007, EST.
By JAKE COYLE

NEW YORK (AP) - Not long after "The Sopranos" began airing, James Gandolfini remembers someone banging on the door of his Manhattan apartment late at night.

"So I opened the door and the guy just turns white," Gandolfini said in a recent magazine interview. "All of a sudden I realize, 'Oh . . . he thinks I'm Tony."'

Any blurring of the line between actor Gandolfini and troubled mob boss Soprano is understandable given the towering achievement of Gandolfini's performance, which resumes Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT on HBO. The 45-year-old actor has portrayed the iconic criminal for eight years now, passionately channelling his similarities into the character.

"I'm playing an Italian lunatic from New Jersey, and that's basically what I am," Gandolfini has said.

The actor and character differ in many ways, of course, including their attitudes toward homicide. While Tony Soprano is a larger-than-life figure, Gandolfini is exceptionally modest and obsessive - he has described himself as "a 260-pound Woody Allen."

He didn't begin acting until his mid-20s, then became a little-known character actor before "The Sopranos" made him one of the most recognizable faces in television history.

Gandolfini is notoriously press-shy and declines nearly all interview requests - including those from The Associated Press for this article. His usual response is that there are so many other actors more interesting than him.

But the man behind the mobster is far from boring - largely because of his unlikely path to stardom and his unique relation to it.

Gandolfini grew up in Park Ridge, N.J. His father was a building maintenance chief at a Catholic school and his mother was the cafeteria chief at another Catholic school. Both parents, having spent much of their childhood in Italy, often spoke Italian - though it didn't rub off much on their son.

"My father always said a million times, 'We're peasants,"' Gandolfini told Rolling Stone in 2001, explaining that he finds fame "ugly." "It's just a little odd for me, to get that slightly different treatment sometimes. And I'm uncomfortable with it. . . . I want nothing to do with privilege."

Gandolfini attended nearby Rutgers University and graduated with a degree in communications. When he was 19, Gandolfini's girlfriend of two years died in a car accident. He mentioned her in accepting his third Emmy, in 2003.

"I might not have done what I've done" without her death, he told GQ, adding that the experience led him to seek a release through acting. He would later describe the reason he acts as to "vomit my emotions out of me."

After college, Gandolfini moved to New York, where he worked as a bartender, bouncer and nightclub manager. When he was 25, he joined a friend of a friend in an acting class, which he continued for several years.

Gandolfini's big break was a Broadway production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" where he played Steve, one of Stanley Kowalski's poker buddies. His film debut was in Sidney Lumet's "A Stranger Among Us" (1992).

The role that perhaps most hinted at Gandolfini's talent for fusing violence with charisma - which he would perfect in Tony Soprano - was the tough he played in Tony Scott's 1993 film, "True Romance." In a memorable scene, he beats Patricia Arquette's character to a pulp while offering flirtatious banter such as, "You gotta lot of heart kid."

Scott recalls Gandolfini's audition clearly: "You don't have to be a brain surgeon to spot someone who's got that much talent."

"He's such a unique combination of charming and dangerous, and it's inherent in who he is," he said.

The director, who also worked with Gandolfini in 1995's "Crimson Tide," recalled the actor's commitment, which included staying in a rundown motel to prep for "True Romance."

"In both cases, he became the character," Scott said. "I wonder how much of (that commitment) is stealing his soul as he does yet another season, because I know how much he gives in terms of his self."

Gandolfini continued with supporting roles in "Get Shorty" (1995), "The Juror" (1996), Lumet's "Night Falls on Manhattan" (1997), "She's So Lovely" (1997) "Fallen" (1998) and "A Civil Action" (1998). But it was "True Romance" that piqued the interest of "Sopranos" creator David Chase.

"Some of the turmoil that's inside of Jim, that pain and sadness, is what he uses to bring that guy to the screen," Chase told GQ.

Nobody was more surprised by the decision to cast him in the lead than Gandolfini.

"I thought, I've never been the lead before. They're going to hire somebody else," he told Vanity Fair. "But I knew I could do it. I have small amounts of Mr. Soprano in me. I was 35, a lunatic, a madman."

"The Sopranos" premiered in 1999 to immediate adulation, much of which praised Gandolfini's relatable performance as a mob boss who struggles with average problems. By its second season, "The Sopranos" was a breakout hit that would change the cable TV landscape and make HBO a revered bastion of creativity.

His modest attitude set the tone on the set, said Steve Van Zandt, who plays Tony's consigliere, Silvio Dante.

"He's so humble a cat. I think it probably came from being a character actor all those years, and being very surprised - openly surprised - to be cast a lead," said Van Zandt. "If HE'S not acting like a diva, nobody better act like a diva."

But there was one notable dustup between Gandolfini and HBO. Before production was to begin on season five in 2003, the actor threatened to leave if HBO didn't raise his salary. The network countersued Gandolfini for $100 million. The lawsuits were eventually dropped and Gandolfini, approximately doubled his salary of $400,000 per episode.

Gandolfini's personal life also started to appear in the tabloids. Two months after the "Sopranos" premiered in 1999, he married public relations executive Marcella Wudarski. They had a son, Michael, in May of that year, and moved out of Manhattan to a two-hectare New Jersey estate in 2001.

But in March 2002, Gandolfini filed for divorce. The proceedings dredged up allegations from Wudarski of cocaine and alcohol abuse by Gandolfini. In 2004, he became engaged to writer Lora Somoza but the couple split in early 2005.

The many breaks in the "Sopranos" schedule have allowed Gandolfini to appear in a number of movies, including comedies ("The Mexican," "Surviving Christmas," "Romance & Cigarettes"), an action movie ("The Last Castle"), the Coen brothers' "The Man Who Wasn't There" and last year's award-seeking flop "All the King's Men."

All have been supporting roles - perhaps because playing Tony Soprano has taken up too much time and energy for larger parts, or maybe because Gandolfini remains committed to the character acting of his past.

This month, his latest movie, "Lonely Hearts," will be released. Costarring with Salma Hayek and his friend John Travolta, Gandolfini switches to the other side of the law for the period crime drama.

Writer-director Todd Robinson was impressed.

"He said to me, 'People try to rope me into their movies all the time. I almost always find myself pitching other actors that can do it better than me,' " Robinson said. "Acting is make-believe, but this guy believes what he's doing."

Gandolfini has spoken as though judgment of his career will have to wait until after "The Sopranos." He has a three-year deal with HBO to create original programming and his company is currently producing a documentary called "Occupation Iraq," about U.S. soldiers in the war. (Gandolfini has visited troops in the Persian Gulf.)

The actor's biggest post-Sopranos project is a film about Ernest Hemingway, in which he plays the writer. That's no small task, but Gandolfini is clearly looking forward to new challenges and shedding the heavy burden that has been Tony Soprano.

"It's been a great opportunity, but I don't have much trepidation about it ending," he told Vanity Fair. "It's more than time. Part of the fun of acting is the research, finding out about other people. As much as I've explored this guy, I don't know what else to really do with him. I've been in one place for 10 years. That's enough."


©The Canadian Press, 2007

I can't Friggin WAIT for this!!!

Die-hard fan here. I just am on shift work, I sure hope it doesn't interfere with my ability to watch this show.

damn I wish I had a PVR.

damn- I guess I will have to order HBO