Jul 29, 1942

Brooklyn, New York, USA

Genaro Anthony Sirico, Jr. (born July 29, 1942 Midwood, Brooklyn), better known as Tony Sirico, is an American actor who is most famous for his role as Paulie Walnuts in the television series The Sopranos.

Sirico was born in Midwood, Brooklyn to Neapolitan parents.

Sirico has played gangsters in a number of films, including Gangsters, Love and Money, Fingers, The Last Fight, Goodfellas, Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, Gotti, Cop Land, and Mickey Blue Eyes. He also played a policem... ... (read more...) an in the film Dead Presidents.[1]

Sirico's brother, Robert Sirico, is a priest and co-founder of the free-market Acton Institute.[1]

Before turning to acting, Sirico was reportedly a mob associate or made man (stories vary depending on the source) of the Colombo crime family serving under Carmine Persico and had been arrested twenty-eight times. There is a Sopranos reference to this fact when Paulie says "I made it through the seventies by the skin of my balls when the Colombos were goin at it." [2] In 1971, he pled guilty to felony weapons possession and was sentenced to an "indeterminate" prison term of up to four years, of which Sirico ended up serving twenty months. According to a court transcript, at the time of his sentencing, he also had pending charges for drug possession.[3]

He currently resides in Brooklyn, New York