Frank Vincent

Frank Vincent Gattuso Jr., born April 15, 1937, in North Adams, Massachusetts, was an American actor of Italian descent, with family roots in Sicily and Naples. He grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey, where his father, Frank Vincent Gattuso Sr., worked as an iron worker and businessman. He had two brothers, Nick and Jimmy, and a half-sister, Fran. Vincent died on September 13, 2017, following open-heart surgery in New Jersey, at the age of 80.

Before pursuing acting, Vincent built his early career in music. Proficient on drums, piano, and trumpet, he worked as a studio musician alongside recording artists including Paul Anka and Del Shannon. He also led his own jazz ensemble, billed as Frank Vincent and the Aristocats, which performed in the evenings. In 1969, needing a piano player to secure bookings, Vincent hired Joe Pesci to play guitar. As lounge music declined in popularity, the two transitioned to stand-up comedy, performing together as Vincent and Pesci from 1970 to 1976. Their act drew on Abbott and Costello-style double-act comedy combined with Don Rickles-style insult humor, and the partnership forged a lasting professional and personal friendship between the two men.

Vincent's path into film began when he and Pesci appeared in the low-budget gangster picture The Death Collector in 1976, where Robert De Niro noticed their performances and brought them to the attention of Martin Scorsese. Scorsese cast Vincent in a supporting role in Raging Bull (1980), in which he played Salvy alongside Pesci and De Niro. Vincent went on to appear in two further Scorsese productions: Goodfellas (1990), where he played Billy Batts, a made man in the Gambino crime family who is killed by Pesci's character, and Casino (1995), in which he portrayed Frank Marino, a character based on real-life figure Frank Cullotta, who serves as the sidekick of Pesci's character before ultimately killing him. He also appeared in small roles in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989) and Jungle Fever (1991), playing an abusive Italian-American patriarch in the latter. His international film work included a supporting role in Juan José Jusid's Argentine production Made in Argentina (1987), in which he played Vito, a wealthy Manhattan businessman who befriends a substance-abuse counselor who had treated Vito's son.

On Broadway, Vincent appeared in Liliom in 1940. On television, his most prominent role came in the HBO crime drama The Sopranos, where he played Phil Leotardo, a New York City gangster and boss of the fictional Lupertazzi crime family, across the fifth and sixth seasons from 2004 to 2007. Additional television credits included the 1996 television movie Gotti, in which he portrayed Robert "D.B." DiBernardo, an associate of John Gotti. He made a cameo appearance alongside fellow Sopranos actor Steve Schirripa in the Stargate Atlantis episode "Vegas" in 2009. In video games, Vincent voiced Mafia boss Salvatore Leone in Grand Theft Auto III (2001), reprising the role in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004) and Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (2005).

Among his other notable credits, Vincent appeared in the 1998 film Belly, directed by Hype Williams and starring Nas and DMX, on which he also served as an acting coach. He starred as the main protagonist in Chicago Overcoat (2009) and played Lieutenant Marino in The Tested (2008). In 2003, he portrayed Danny Santini in This Thing of Ours and appeared in the film Remedy. That same year, he testified in court on behalf of director Danny Provenzano, who was serving a ten-year sentence for racketeering and other charges. In 1996, Vincent appeared in the music video for Nas's song "Street Dreams." He also appeared in a British television commercial for Peugeot cars and, in early 2005, in a series of Irish television commercials for Permanent TSB.

In 2006, Vincent co-authored A Guy's Guide to Being a Man's Man, published by Berkley Books. In 2013, he starred in the IDW Publishing comic series Killogy, created by Alan Robert, alongside Marky Ramone. The series was nominated at the Ghastly Awards for Best Mini-Series and won multiple Horror Comic Awards from the Horror News Network. The comics were adapted into a 3D-animated series in 2014, with the original cast providing their voices. Vincent won the Italian American Entertainer of the Year Award in 1999. A resident of Nutley, New Jersey, he also released a line of hand-rolled cigars bearing his image. Following his death, his remains were cremated at a funeral home in Montclair, New Jersey, and a funeral service was held on September 16, 2017.