Vincent Pastore has died. Although he accrued nearly 200 credits over the course of a 40-year career in TV and film, Pastore was best known for a single role: Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero, who he played for two seasons (and the occasional post-mortem dream sequence) on HBO’s era-defining The Sopranos. Later a fixture on the reality TV circuit—where he appeared on everything from The Celebrity Apprentice to Shark Tank, where he once successfully pitched a product—Pastore continued to work extensively, if idiosyncratically, up through the 2020s. Per TMZ, Pastore was found dead in his Bronx home on Saturday. He was 80.
Born in New York in the 1940s, Pastore held a variety of jobs over the first four decades of his life, before eventually gravitating toward acting. Despite appearing in small parts in well-known films like Goodfellas and Carlito’s Way in the early ’90s, Pastore was apparently working as a chauffeur when he met brothers Matt and Kevin Dillon, and told them of his dreams of acting; the pair attended a community theater production Pastore was working in, and he later credited Kevin Dillon for giving him his first serious break. Pastore worked steadily from then on—albeit typically in small parts that tended to pigeonhole his heavyset appearance, natural accent, and stern looks as those of a Mafioso, including popping up in The Jerky Boys, TV movie Gotti, and Jim Abrahams’ parody flick Mafia!
In 1999, Pastore landed the job that would grant him national recognition and, ultimately, define the vast majority of his career: David Chase’s The Sopranos. Taking on the role of Big Pussy, a veteran soldier working under James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano, Pastore was able to tap into multiple elements of his talents, far beyond his mere ability to deliver hard-ass looks. As an eventually revealed traitor to the DiMeo crime family, Big Pussy was an endless balancing act, at times funny, charming, pathetic, vulnerable, daring, miserable, and, above-all-else, convincing as a guy whose betrayal would haunt Tony Soprano for the rest of his days. Pastore tackled the assignment with aplomb, creating a character who transcended his status as a “rat,” becoming one of the show’s defining tragic figures.
In the aftermath of Sopranos, Pastore continued to work extensively, often in roles riffing on his now-established persona. This same period also saw him branch out into reality TV, where he eventually racked up credits on shows like Celebrity Fit Club, Celebrity Apprentice, and more—jobs where he was often happy to play into his now-established public persona. Beyond his acting work, Pastore also developed a career behind-the-scenes in the theater, founding a New York theater with Maureen Van Zandt, who he co-starred with on The Sopranos.
Pastore continued acting up through 2025, often in small roles or single-episode stints on established shows. His final credited role was a voice appearance as a talking llama on Showtime’s Yellowjackets—a deliberate homage to the dream sequence that paved the way for Big Pussy’s death on The Sopranos 25 years earlier.
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