Movie, TV tough guy, Loggia, dies at age 85

LOS ANGELES — Academy Award-nominated actor Robert Loggia, who was known for gravelly voiced gangsters from Scarface to The Sopranos, has died. He was 85.

Loggia’s wife Aubrey Loggia said he died Friday at his home in Los Angeles after a five-year battle with Alzheimer’s. “His poor body gave up,” she said. “He loved being an actor and he loved his life.”

Tom Hanks, who starred alongside Loggia in 1988’s Big, expressed his grief on Twitter.

“A great actor in heart and soul,” Hanks wrote. “A sad day.”

A solidly built man with a rugged face and rough voice, Loggia fit neatly into gangster movies, playing a Miami drug lord in Scarface, which starred Al Pacino; and a Sicilian mobster in Prizzi’s Honor, with Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner. He played a wise guy in David Lynch’s Lost Highway and again on David Chase’s The Sopranos, appearing in four episodes as a previously jailed veteran mobster Michele “Feech” La Manna.

Loggia received his only Academy Award nomination, as supporting actor in 1985’s Jagged Edge. He played gumshoe Sam Ransom, who investigated a murder involving Glenn Close and Jeff Bridges.

Loggia gave a comic performance in Penny Marshall’s Big, when he danced with Tom Hanks on a giant piano keyboard.

Hanks played an adolescent granted a wish to be big, overnight becoming a 30-something man who — still mentally a boy — eventually finds work at a toy company run by Loggia’s character.

A chance meeting in a toy store leads to the pair tapping out duets of “Chopsticks” and “Heart and Soul” on the piano keys built into the floor.

Loggia also appeared in five films for comedy director Blake Edwards, including three Pink Panther films and the dark comedy S.O.B. He also portrayed Joseph, husband of Mary, in George Stevens’ biblical epic The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Loggia made his film debut in 1956 alongside Paul Newman in Somebody Up There Likes Me.

Among his later roles was as a general and presidential adviser in 1996’s Independence Day.

Asked in 1990 how he maintained such a varied career, spanning Broadway, television and film, he responded: “I’m a character actor in that I play many different roles, and I’m virtually unrecognizable from one role to another. So I never wear out my welcome.”

The son of Sicilian immigrants, Loggia was born in 1930 in New York City’s borough of Staten Island. He grew up in Manhattan’s Little Italy section.