Michael Gandolfini

Gandolfini was born on May 10, 1999, in New York City to actor James Gandolfini and Marcy Wudarski. He is of Italian, Polish, and Slovak heritage, and has a younger half-sister from his father's second marriage. While he was a teenager, Gandolfini enjoyed performing, but his father advised against an acting career; he wanted him to pursue sports or "be a director. They have the power," he said. His father James Gandolfini died at age 51 of a heart attack in Rome on June 19, 2013. After his father's death, Michael Gandolfini decided to pursue acting. He enrolled at New York University after graduating from high school. After early auditions, he was cast in the HBO drama series The Deuce as Joey Dwyer. In 2019, he was cast in The Many Saints of Newark to play the young version of Tony Soprano, the role played by his father in the television series The Sopranos. Gandolfini had never watched the show. He described watching it while preparing for the role as an intense process. He was later cast in the Russo brothers' crime drama Cherry. In 2024, he was cast in Warfare, an A24 war movie written and directed by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza.