I have said it many times: If and when I have grandchildren, I will tell them that I saw Michael Jordan play basketball, Jacques Pepin make an omelet, and James Gandolfini act.

Anybody who has ever been on a TV or movie set knows there is no place more guaranteed to exterminate any sense of romance about TV and the movies. Not so when Gandolfini was shooting, say, an ordinary family dinner scene of The Sopranos. Every take, and there were always dozens, would be just a little bit different. Every line delivery bringing up another subtle shade or variation of the character he had so come to embody. And each time, you could tell, required a return journey into that character as real and visceral as the plate of spaghetti and braciole he would dig into again and again and again. It was hypnotizing. It was exhausting.

It is not too much of a stretch to say that if Gandolfini had not gotten the role of Tony Soprano—as, by all rights of all television rules ever written, he shouldn’t have—and attacked it with such gusto, television would not be what it is today. Without an actor capable of finding Tony’s melancholy, his soulfulness, his absurdity and his rage, the era of TV antiheroes may never have found its foothold. In interviews, which he did his very best to avoid, the actor would often fall back on some version of "I’m just a dumb, fat guy from Jersey." "That’s bullshit," David Chase once told me, with an affectionate chuckle. "Jim knows damned well what he’s doing. He knows."

We can’t know, certainly not yet and maybe not ever, to what extent the strain of work contributed to Gandolfini’s death yesterday. The following story—which was already on stands when the news broke—suggests what a struggle it could be for him. The best piece of evidence for his legacy may be that the people for whom his fits and absences made life most difficult were the same people, to a man and woman, who regarded him with the most compassion and admiration. They forgave him and they loved him.—Brett Martin

One cold winter’s evening in January 2002, Tony Soprano went missing and a small portion of the universe ground to a halt.

It was not completely out of the blue. Ever since The Sopranos had debuted in 1999, turning Tony—anxiety-prone dad, New Jersey mobster, suburban seeker of meaning—into a millennial pop-culture icon, the character’s frustration, volatility, and anger had often been indistinguishable from those qualities of James Gandolfini, the actor who brought them to life. It was a punishing role, requiring not only vast amounts of nightly memorization and long days under hot lights, but also a daily descent into Tony’s psyche—at the best of times, a worrisome place to dwell; at the worst, ugly, violent, and sociopathic.

Some actors—notably Edie Falco, who played Tony’s wife, Carmela Soprano—are capable of plumbing such depths without getting in over their heads. Blessed with a near photographic memory, Falco could show up for work, memorize her lines, play the most emotionally devastating of scenes, and then return happily to her trailer to join her regular companion, Marley, a gentle yellow Lab mix.