Actor who plays N.Y. mobster in TV's

JOHN MCKAY

TORONTO (CP) - When flinty-eyed actor Vince Curatola walks into an Italian restaurant, does he get special attention? You bet.

Curatola acknowledges the benefits of playing urbane New York mob boss John Sacramoni - Johnny Sack - on the hit HBO series The Sopranos. "The restaurant, the bank, wherever," Curatola concedes with a laugh. "It's every moment of the day, actually, it really never stops."

But of course Curatola maintains that despite playing an old-school gangster who serves as an intimidating foil to New Jersey counterpart Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), he's nothing like that in real life.

"Yeah, I hope. I'm docile."

The actor - who really was born in New Jersey and lives there today - says every once in a while, when they are shooting on location in Jersey, there's a hint that the genuine article does watch The Sopranos.

"You never really know what someone does for a living," he says. "Someone maybe across the street, let's say, just gives us a little smirk and a little smile. And I guess that's maybe a sign of approval from a certain subculture that they like the show."

When viewers last saw Johnny, he was in heavy conversation with Tony about the rift between their New York and New Jersey crews, when suddenly cops were pouring all over his property and Tony was fleeing in the snow like a panicky fox with bloodhounds on his tail.

Is Johnny out of the picture? Heading for prison?

Naturally, Curatola, like the rest of the cast, insists he doesn't know himself what's coming and probably wouldn't say if he did. Shooting on the sixth and final season of The Sopranos isn't scheduled to begin until early April, with telecasts not resuming until March 2006 on HBO and in Canada on the Movie Network and Movie Central (although season 3 is currently airing Sunday nights).

But the actor does believe that the right thing would be for the two bosses - who tend to rub each other the wrong way - to reach an accord. Like the oft-repeated line in the Godfather movies, it should be about business, nothing personal.

"An accord is the only way to avoid a complete collapse of the money-making system," he says in a telephone interview from New York. "Because, you know, this is all about money. It's not about friendship, it's not about respect. It's all about having the most toys at the end."

Tony and Johnny Sack are polar opposites in many ways. Johnny is invariably cool, with a deep respect for the old mob values. He dearly loves his wife Ginny despite the fact she is, shall we say, Rubenesque. In one unforgettable sequence last season, Tony's crew was having a good laugh over the size of Ginny's backside when Johnny walked in and wanted to know what was so funny.

Putting personal ahead of business, he even ordered a hit on Ralphie Cifaretto for allegedly making an off-colour joke about Ginny's heft. He was eventually talked out of it.

While the rest of these latter-day gangsters only pay lip service to the old Mafia code of honour, Johnny really believes in it.

"He's anal retentive, he wants everything the way the rule book says," Curatola believes. "To see Tony Soprano be so self-indulgent, women and drinking and so on, Johnny doesn't want that."

Besides, Johnny has a big stake in Tony's Jersey operation because if it proves to be a weak link, it can affect New York's pocket, too.

"Johnny can't understand why everything can't just be like the Roman legions. You have to have discipline."

And yet, Tony and Johnny do seem to share one trait: they're both much too sensitive and emotional for a job that requires cold blood, not hot, which may eventually lead to their respective downfalls.

But despite the wise-guy ambience of the series, Curatola still believes it's not really a show about the mob. It's really about the human condition, he says, about a businessman who is under heavy stress both at home and at the office and who, like a Caesar trying to hold everything together, could crack at any moment.

"You know, Tony Soprano could be a corporate raider, the rest of us could all be executives who plunder the bank account. It's all about greed, and it's about stress and it's about 'I know what I do is wrong. Why do I keep doing it?' "

Asked where the Sopranos role fits in his acting career, Curatola, 51, says he's actually new to the business, having started only a dozen years ago with a part on a Law & Order episode.

"I never suffered through the rejections of auditions and so on. This kind of fell into my lap, really," he says. "So for me this is like an out-of-body experience, you know?"