1. - James Gandolfini, The Sopranos, TV, 1999-2007. Scenarist David Chase was always looking to create a character for “the very funny and magnetic” guitarist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. When Chase came up with Tony Soprano, HBO disagreed. So did Little Streven.. For the same reason: he’d never acted before. Chase offered any other part he wanted. “I feel kinda baf taking another actor’s part here. I’m a guitar player. These guys, they go to school, they go Off Broadway, they work for five, ten years honing their craft and being waiters...” OK, said Chase, he’d write something just for him: Soprano’s closest friend and consigliere Silvio Dante... based, in fact, on a Silvo Dante in a short story by Van Zandt, himself. (His wife, Maureen, played his TV wife, Gabriella).