Robert Loggia from ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘Big’ is dead at 85

Robert Loggia, who was known for his gravelly voiced gangster in “Scarface” and “The Sopranos”, died on December 4, Friday, at his home in Los Angeles.

In director Brian De Palma’s hit 1983 crime drama “Scarface”, Loggia played drug lord Frank Lopez alongside Al Pacino in the violent tale of Miami mobsters.

He earned an Oscar nomination for his role in the 1985 Jeff Bridges movie Jagged Edge.

Together they danced to the songs “Heart and Soul” and “Chopsticks” on the jumbo floor keyboard at New York’s fabled FAO Schwarz toy store in what was one of the famous cinematic scenes of the 1980s. He also appeared in three different Pink Panther movies with three different character names. In George Stevens’s sprawling biblical film “The Greatest Story Ever Told” he played Joseph.

Loggia’s wife Audrey, who was hitched to him for a long time broke the news of his death.

Among his later roles was as a general and presidential adviser in the 1996 sci-fi thriller “Independence Day”. When the series was canceled after one season, however, the distraught Loggia largely dropped out of the business for a time.

Loggia was assigned for an Emmy in 1989 for his depiction of FBI operators Nick Mancuso in the arrangement Mancuso FBI.

In 1956, he made his film debut in Somebody Up There Likes Me, playing a mobster who tries to persuade boxer Rocky Graziano (Paul Newman) to throw a fight.

The son of Sicilian immigrants, Loggia was born in 1930 in New York City’s borough of Staten Island.

Mr. Loggia made his Broadway debut in a 1960 production of Lillian Hellman’s “Toys in the Attic”, filling a role that had previously been played by Jason Robards Jr.

Loggia first enjoyed a lucrative career in television for 20 years, appearing on almost every popular TV series in the 1960s and 1970s.