When I first crossed paths with James Gandolfini, it was just about the most classically New Jersey moment possible.

And as we look back on the 20th anniversary of the premiere of "The Sopranos" on HBO — which was Jan. 10, 1999 — I am reminded of it.

It was 2007, and I was working as a weekend reporter for the Asbury Park Press, covering whatever news popped up on a given day; on this particular chilly Saturday afternoon in March, Tony Soprano was in town.

Gandolfini had already won a pair of Emmys and was well on his way to pop culture immortality thanks to his starring turn on the HBO gangster family drama.

The series had famously filmed scenes in Asbury Park a number of times over the years, as far back as 1999. When I met Gandolfini, he was back in town thanks to another project; the Garden State Film Festival was screening “Club Soda,” a short film featuring Gandolfini, made by his longtime friend Paul Carafotes.

So here was international superstar James Gandolfini, bag of popcorn in hand and a weathered leather jacket on his back, walking just a few feet from me down the Asbury Park boardwalk.

“Club Soda” had just screened at the Paramount Theatre, and he was going to take a few minutes to answer reporters’ questions in the former Howard Johnson’s building, still more than a year from its revival as Tim McLoone’s Supper Club.

It was the first memory that flashed in my mind when I learned he’d died in June 2013 at the age of 51.

Gandolfini, a Westwood native, attended Park Ridge High School and Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

In 2007, Gandolfini said his memories of Asbury Park were limited to time he spent filming "The Sopranos" in town. However, he had a fondness for the city.

"This is such an odd town, but I like coming here; there's something about it," he said. "This is different from anywhere."

Praising the Garden State Film Festival and seeming to anticipate the creation of the Asbury Park Music and Film Festival years later, Gandolfini also said holding a film festival in a city like Asbury Park is important "just to bring a lot of people back. It brought me back. … Any cultural event is a good thing."

“Club Soda,” the film that brought Gandolfini back to Asbury Park that day, was about a young man turning toward a life of crime while trying to find success as an actor.

Gandolfini appeared as The Mysterious Man, a ghostly figure who haunts the bar where the majority of the film's action takes place. Before acting stardom found him, Gandolfini worked as a bouncer at the former Ryan's (now Harvest Moon) in New Brunswick.

Asked how he approached the idea of playing a cigar-smoking ghost, Gandolfini was characteristically nonchalant.

"I just played a drunk who owned a bar," he said.

Likewise, just as one character in "Club Soda" asks the film’s protagonist if he would rather be an actor or a movie star, Gandolfini was quick to respond when the same question was put to him.

"I'd say an actor," he said. "George Clooney is a movie star."

Gandolfini talked of Hollywood as "a two-tier system," and explained why he thought his film future was in character and dialogue-based films rather than in superhero blockbusters.

"It seems like they're doing movies (that cost) $20 million and under and $80 million and over, and I don't look good in tights," he said.

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He never donned tights and a cape on the big screen, but Gandolfini certainly made a big impression in his too-short career on the big and small screens.

He was hilarious as a military man in the 2009 British comedy "In the Loop," and he broke hearts with his voice acting that same year in "Where the Wild Things Are."

He was terrifying as a violent mobster in the 1993 Tony Scott and Quentin Tarantino cult classic “True Romance,” and delivered a brilliant supporting performance as a burnt-out hit man a million miles away from Tony Soprano in 2012’s "Killing Them Softly."

He paired with a fellow Jersey guy, Englewood’s John Travolta, for a few jobs, including a shattering turn as a blue-collar husband and father grappling with family illness in “A Civil Action” (1998) and a scene-stealing performance as a gruff-but-charming bodyguard in “Get Shorty” (1995).

When I interviewed Gandolfini in 2010 for "Welcome to the Rileys," a drama where he played a dedicated family man, I asked about his post-"Sopranos" choices in roles.

"It's not that I want to explore these other parts of me — it's spent, you're done with that, and then you want to look for something else," Gandolfini said. "You want to go to a different place."

In “Welcome to the Rileys,” Gandolfini played a man mourning the loss of his teenage daughter years earlier who forges a bond with a runaway stripper played by "The Twilight Saga" franchise star Kristen Stewart.

“I read (the script) and it was a different part for me, and I thought it was pretty beautiful in its simplicity,” Gandolfini said of the role. “It was a different story than I'd read — that's the thing that I'm looking for, something that's just a little different and has some decent things to say."

In my interactions with Gandolfini, he was never alone when making the media rounds. He had Carafotes by his side while discussing “Club Soda,” and three years later he was accompanied by Stewart to promote “Welcome to the Rileys.”

That fall day, Gandolfini told me he still regularly took time to visit his Garden State stomping grounds.

"I spend every summer at the Jersey Shore and I get everybody together at this house," Gandolfini said before Stewart chimed in, jokingly suggesting he was inviting "Snooki (and) the Situation."

He didn’t miss a beat.

"You know, that's the thing," Gandolfini replied. "Everybody thinks ‘Jersey Shore.' I have never seen Snooki in my life. But every summer I'm down there and I go back to New Brunswick every once in a while."

One of Gandolfini’s final roles was as CIA director Leon Panetta in “Zero Dark Thirty,” Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-winning 2012 thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Gandolfini dedicated plenty of time to honoring real-life heroes; he executive-produced a pair of documentaries on members of the American military for HBO: "Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq" (2007) and "Wartorn: 1816 to 2010" (2010).

"Wartorn" examined post-traumatic stress disorder from the Civil War through the modern conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The film utilized archival photographs, writings and footage, as well as contemporary interviews with veterans and their families, to create a panoramic view of the psychological effects of combat.

The film also included conversations among Gandolfini and top U.S. military personnel, armed service members in Iraq and medical experts at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

"For some reason, I think a lot of these soldiers watched 'The Sopranos' back in Iraq, something they did to pass the time, that they seemed to be willing to talk to me and to allow me pretty much the honor of talking to them and visiting with them," Gandolfini told me in 2010, "and so it just seemed to be some way I could do something.

"I mean, we're at war," he continued. "I think a lot of people just kind of forget about it or just have their own things they have to deal with, but it would be a good thing if we tried to stop it or, I don't want to get political, but either stop it or do what we need to do and try to get out of there. Because it's damaging, not just to us but to Afghanis and everybody else, obviously.

"So, that's something I wanted to say and to show these kids, these young kids who are great, and they're going back two, three times. Let's pay some more attention if we can, that's all. I wanted to honor the soldiers."

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