Actor Paul Sorvino is no longer

American actor and director Paul Sorvino, who specialized in roles of bandits and police like those of Paulie Cicero in Goodfellas and Sergeant Phil Cerretta in the series Law & Order died at the age of 83.

His representative, Roger Neal, said the actor died of natural causes on Monday morning in Indiana.

“Our hearts are broken, there will never be another Paul Sorvino. He was the love of my life and one of the finest performers to ever embrace screen and stage,” his wife Dee Dee Sorvino said in a statement.

In more than 50 years of career in the entertainment industry, Mr. Sorvino has been a major figure in film and television, playing an Italian-American communist in Reds by Warren Beatty; playing Henry Kissinger in the Nixon by Oliver Stone; and putting himself in the shoes of an underworld boss named Eddie Valentine in The Rocketeer.

He has often said that while he is probably best known for his gangster roles, his real passions were poetry, painting and opera.

Born in Brooklyn in 1939 to a mother who taught the piano and a foreman father in a dress factory, Paul Sorvino was attracted to music at a very young age and studied at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York, where he fell in love with the theater. He made his Broadway debut in 1964 in Bajour and his film debut in 1970 in Where’s Poppa? by director Carl Reiner.

With his build and his height of six feet four inches, Paul Sorvino imposed his presence, regardless of the media used. In the 1970s he starred alongside Al Pacino in The Panic in Needle Park as well as with James Caan in The Gambler before reconnecting with Carl Reiner in Oh God!. It was also seen in the bank robbery comedy directed by William Friedkin The Brink’s Jobas well as in Slow Dancing in the Big City by John G. Avildsen.

The actor was particularly prolific in the 1990s, portraying Lips in the Dick Tracy by Warren Beatty, then Paul Cicero in Goodfellas by Martin Scorsese. A role inspired by the mobster Paul Vario. He also appeared in 31 episodes of Law & Order.

Then followed the movies The Rocketeer, The Firm and Nixon, which earned him an award nomination from the Film and Television Actors Guild of the United States. We also saw it in the Romeo and Juliet by Baz Luhrmann, playing Fulgencio Capulet, Juliet’s father.

Warren Beatty became infatuated with Paul Sorvino and hired him again for political satire Bulworth as well as for his love letter to Hollywood Rules Don’t Apply.

Paul Sorvino is survived by three children from his first marriage, including Oscar-winning actress Mira Sorvino. He also starred in a film written and directed by his daughter Amanda Sorvino in which his son Michael Sorvino also played.