Paulie Walnuts' Funniest Scenes From 'Sopranos'
Genaro Anthony "Tony" Sirico Jr. (born July 29, 1942) played Peter Paul "Paulie Walnuts" Gualtieri, my favorite member of "The Sopranos" fictional New Jersey mob family. In the above YouTube bit, you can see a compilation of some of Paulie's funniest highlights from the series. Sirico aced his role in the Sopranos because he had some real-life experience to inspire his performance. In other words, "Paulie Walnuts" was played by an alleged real-life former gangster. Before turning to acting, Sirico was a fast-rising mob associate of the Colombo crime family under Carmine Persico; he'd had been arrested 28 times." A Sopranos reference seems to give nod to this fact: the episode near the end of the last season in which Paulie Walnuts says, "I lived through the seventies by the skin of my nuts when the Colombos were goin' at it." What is factual is that in 1967, Sirico was sent to prison for about a year for robb...