Loose Cannon

as tony soprano's hair-trigger kinsman, michael imperioli helps hbo's blockbuster bad guys outgun the competition

He felt like he'd been shot. Standing on the sidewalk near his apartment in lower Manhattan, six blocks from the burning north tower of the World Trade Center, Michael Imperioli thought he was a witness to a gruesome accident. Then came a deep bass note as a ball of fire shot out of the south tower, so close he could feel the boom in his gut. ''That's when I Knew--we all knew,'' says Imperioli, who plays Christopher on The Sopranos. ''This was no accident. We were being attacked.''

He ran closer to the fires--to a grade school where kids huddled inside--to fetch his 11-year-old daughter. they hurried home, gathered up a few toys, a little money. Imperioli, with his wife. Victoria, daughter Isabella and her two little brothers, fled the neighborhood just ahead of a 40-foot tsunami of smoke that left windows white with dust, ash, asbestos and aerosolized metal.

Suddenly the fourth season of The Sopranos didn't seem so important.

During the next few days Imperioli worked with a medical unit, helping search-and-rescue workers at ground zero. Firefighters clasped his hand: ''Hey, it's Christopher! Bada-bing!''

''That was awkward,'' he says, ''being recognized and thanked when I was just taking them some dry clothes.'' One night he stood at the edge of the rubble, paying his respects, staring for long minutes at the remains of the towers that appeared in The Sopranos' opening sequence. Then he turned and walked uptown. For the living, the show goes on.

After a couple days' delay, shooting resumed in Queens, Manhattan and on Tony Soprano's New Jersey turf. James Gandolfini roared and snorted animal noises--the star's offscreen ritual--while Imperioli got ready by pacing like a caged panther. Then cameras rolled on the new season of TV's greatest soap opera, which hits the home screen soon. ''It's going to be the best season yet. Seriously,'' says Imperioli. ''It's strong stuff.'' That might mean another Emmy nomination for the 36-year-old Imperioli, who lost the 2001 trophy for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series to Bradley Whitford of The West Wing. Not that Imperioli gives a spit, as long as Sopranos knocks off Wing for the heavy hardware. When The Practice beat out Tony's crew for outstanding drama series in 1999, Imperioli called the other show ''awful. Mediocre. It's a show about lawyers! How interesting can it be?'' Imperioli could get a piece of the outstanding writing action, too. He wrote ''From Where to Eternity,'' a screwy, religion-tinged episode that became a second-season classic, and he has two new scripts coming up this year.

With his neighborhood almost cleared of debris and his schedule packed--a film script in the works and commercials to direct, including one featuring Gandolfini--things are looking up for Imperioli, who was a survivor even before September 11.

Born on the first day of 1966, he grew up in hardscrabble Mount Vernon, New York, just up the cratered street from the Bronx. His parents were immigrants from Sicily, his father a Bronx bus driver. Michael skipped college for acting school and cofounded experimental theater troupes that haunted ratty playhouses downtown. Gigging by night with Lili Taylor and other young actors who would become indie-movie icons, Imperioli spent his days as a fry cook. ''And a bad one,'' he says. ''My eggs looked . . . deflated. Most of the stuff I cooked was hard to identify as food.'' His acting went unrecognized, too, largely because Mr. Headstrong Junior Pacino could be a pain to work with. He played every role his way, even if it meant he was practically in his own play--and one night he was. After getting confused during David Mamet's The Woods, Imperioli began acting the play's ending about an hour too soon. His leading lady tried to signal a warning to him, but he waved her off. She's totally lost, he thought. When he finally realized his error (the audience stayed put after his finale), he did what any true (concluded on page 118) Imperioli (continued from page 94) New Yorker would do: He made up his own ending to Mamet's play, and then took a bow.

Imperioli's next stage role paid so well that he thought he had made his bones as an actor. But after less than a week, he was fired. His major movie debut was a bit part in Lean on Me. ''I had one line. It was, 'Hey, I'm gonna be a star.' But every time they turned on the camera, I panicked. I mumbled so much that they cut my line.'' His break came in 1990, when Martin Scorsese cast the 24-year-old Imperioli in Goodfellas, a job that paid $1500 for two days' work. The kid had burned his last omelette.

As Spider, the dim-bulb bartender, Imperioli annoys Joe Pesci, who shoots him in the foot. In his next scene Spider pisses off Pesci again and dies in a hail of bullets. ''Goodfellas put me in the hospital. I was holding a drinking glass when I got shot and fell, and the glass broke. It sliced open two of my fingers,'' says the actor, who has the scars to prove it. ''So now I've got fake blood all over me, with real blood running down my hand. I look up and see Scorsese and De Niro shaking their heads like Tsk, tsk, tsk, poor kid.''

But the director and star had other scenes to shoot. Imperioli was packed off to the hospital by a production assistant, who dumped him there and went back to work. ''Now the emergency room doctors and nurses see all this fake blood, and it's like code blue. They're strapping me down, rolling me away. I was yelling, 'This is fake blood. It's my hand that's hurt--my hand!' They thought I was delirious.'' When the ER doctors prepared to clean his chest wounds and found wires and blood packets instead, everybody had a laugh. Everybody but Imperioli, still leaking blood from his fingers, waving his hand at the doctors.

Cut from the lacerated kid to a sight on the Goodfellas set that blew him away as much as Pesci's bullets: De Niro preparing for a scene. Imperioli was mesmerized as he watched the star sit at a table and settle himself in his chair before slowly reaching for his silverware. De Niro would turn a fork over in his hand, feeling its heft, and put it down again, moving it half an inch. ''Feeling out the space,'' Imperioli calls it. ''Because his character lives in that space. I couldn't stop watching it. This isn't a man who comes to work and tries to entertain everyone on the set. This is not a man who dissipates his energy.''

Imperioli brought better focus to his own work after Goodfellas. He won roles in Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, Clockers and Girl 6 from Spike Lee, who became a friend and collaborator. There were small but vivid turns in The Basketball Diaries and Dead Presidents, and in Summer of Sam, which he co-wrote. And four years ago, Imperioli read for a part in the story of a middle-aged Mob boss who starts to see a shrink. Yes, he auditioned for Analyze This. But it turned out that he couldn't be in the De Niro-Billy Crystal comedy because there was this new cable show--

''We all loved The Sopranos from the start,'' he says. ''We had a great cast and special writing, like Mario Puzo rewritten by John Cheever. We were surprised that reviewers got the idea right away--that this was classic gangster stuff but with a nuanced view of suburban life. And we were shocked that millions of people ate it up.''

Who could resist? The show was in your face from the jump, with its scatter-cuts of Manhattan's skyline receding as Tony pays his Jersey Turnpike toll with a handful of blood money. This was America through a windshield, darkly. ''A denigration of American culture,'' Imperioli calls the saga of a suburban dad who happens to be an executive of Murder, Inc. Sopranos creator David Chase, who fought off HBO's plan to name the series Family Man, could have called it Killer Knows Best, but this stuff is nastier, funnier and closer to the truth than any sitcom. Christopher, bemoaning the erosion of the crime biz, dreams of scoring as a Hollywood screenwriter--though he can't spell. ''Mob stories are always hot,'' he says, tapping away at a keyboard. Zoom in on his computer, which reads I must be Loyle to my Capo.

Imperioli's shifty-eyed, short-fused Christopher makes a fine foil for Gandolfini, who plays Tony with such sly perfection you want to swear loylety to him yourself. ''Jimmy's such a strong actor,'' Imperioli says. ''When he gets angry, you can feel it in the room--a palpable, physical force.'' So physical that when Tony gets pissed, grabs Christopher around the throat and shakes him, Imperioli goes home with marks on his neck. ''But hey,'' he says, ''if you can't handle a few bruises, you're on the wrong show.''

Along with Edie Falco (Carmela), Dominic Chianese (Uncle Junior) and the others (including Steve Van Zandt, a.k.a. Silvio, a.k.a. Little Steven, whose second-season duties included scoring Bruce Springsteen tickets for the whole gang), Imperioli has been pleased, amused and enriched by the pop-cult creature they've created. He suspects David Chase may keep the series fresh by putting it on ice after five seasons. ''Then we might make a movie together, or come back to TV again after a few years, like Absolutely Fabulous,'' Imperioli says. Meanwhile, nothing Sopranos surprises him. ''I hear there might be a line of Sopranos apparel.'' If so, he hopes it'll be realistic--maybe jogging suits with extra pockets for weapons.

Ambition, talent, luck, stones--Imperioli's rise called for all these, but just as vital was learning to relax, take a break, look around and occupy the moment. A decade after watching De Niro get acquainted with props, he looks back on his prima donna youth and says, ''I worried constantly: Am I full of shit? Am I even an actor? I kept getting fired, and I deserved it. But I worked and watched and got better. You work with people like Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Robert De Niro and Jimmy Gandolfini and you keep your eyes open, you can't help learning.''

Imperioli even learned to drive. An early Sopranos episode called for Christopher to drive Tony around, but Imperioli, a lifelong New Yorker, didn't know how. He had no license, no car, and there he was as Chase's cameras rolled, pumping the gas pedal while actors ran for cover. The bang that followed wasn't a gunshot; it was Imperioli backing into a tree. ''It was not my slickest moment.'' Today the 1999 graduate of Manhattan's Grand Prix Driving School has a New York driver's license in his wallet. ''But still no car. I only drive on TV,'' he says. ''It's much safer--they clear the streets for me.''

The Sopranos changed everything for Imperioli, whose fans run the spectrum from the heroes of September 11 to the guys who break real knees. ''I've heard from some of them,'' he says. ''I mean, I can't prove it. They don't wear IDs.'' But a Sicilian can, you know, kind of tell. Not long ago a thick-necked, pinkie-ringed gentleman buttonholed Imperioli on the street, demanding a moment of his time. ''I got something to say to you,'' the man growled. ''Love the show. Keep it up.''

What do you say to your fan the mobster? If you're not a killer but you play one on TV, you smile, say thanks, shake the man's hand--and try not to wonder where that hand has been.

''Hey,'' Imperioli says, ''if you can't handle a few bruises, you're on the wrong show.''