Frank Vincent, actor

Born: April 15 1937;

Died: September 13 2017

FRANK Vincent, who has died aged 80, was an Italian-American character actor who had a leading role in the final series of The Sopranos and whose long suit on the big screen was getting beaten up by, or beating up, characters played by Joe Pesci.

In Raging Bull (1980), he played Salvi, who has his head repeatedly slammed in a car door by by Jake LaMotta’s brother, played by Pesci; in Goodfellas (1990), he was Billy Batts, a “made guy” in the Gambino family who is almost beaten to death by Tommy (Pesci again) before being stabbed and shot in the boot of a car. The murder opened the film, and later provided central points in the plot.

Both films were directed by Martin Scorsese and the scenes amongst the most memorably brutal (even by his own strong track record) that he created. Equally violent and effective was the moment in Casino (1995) when the director turned the tables, and had Vincent, as the mobster Frank Marino, kill Pesci’s character, Nicky Santoro, beating him with a baseball bat and dumping him and his brother in a shallow grave. Vincent’s expression of grim satisfaction at Pesci’s bloody demise was utterly convincing.

That was perhaps inevitable, for Pesci and Vincent had a longstanding relationship off-screen, which many thought contributed to the tension evident in their encounters on film. During the 1960s they had played together in a band, before launching a cabaret comedy act as Vincent and Pesci, which toured for six years. “We were like a husband and wife and broke up many times,” Vincent said. “Every night we’d argue over every word.”

But after the act called it a day in 1975, Pesci’s film career led him to leading roles and huge fees, while Vincent, though regularly in work, seldom had more than bit parts. The producer Irwin Winkler thought that strange – “actors of his quality are usually big stars” – while Pesci, in a New York Times profile of his former partner, admitted: “I feel bad in a way that he’s not been more successful. But Frankie’s in there and he’s got a shot. Other guys have no shot.”

The names of characters Vincent played – Louie, Carmine, Frankie, Gino, Vinnie, Johnny Big, Tommy Tomatoes, Dino “the Rat”, Big Sal, Tommy “the Bull” – indicated a theme. Though he was two or three times cast as a priest or clergyman, Vincent’s parts could almost always be summed up as “mobster in trenchcoat”, which was actually his billing in 1983’s Easy Money.

Frank Vincent Gattuso, Jr, was born at North Adams, Massachusetts, and grew up in Greenville, a district of Jersey City, New Jersey. His father, an iron worker and amateur dramatics fan, hoped that his son would become a mechanic, but Frank had his heart set on showbusiness from an early age. He played trumpet and piano as a child and eventually determined to become a drummer, after a tour with Father Finnegan’s Drum and Bugle Corps, a band set up to keep Newark teenagers out of trouble.

After a brief stint as a car upholsterer, he formed his own band, Frank Vincent and the Aristocrats, which worked steadily through the late 1950s and 1960s. He worked as a moderately successful session musician during the day, and frequently played several gigs a night. Pesci, who played guitar and sang, joined Vincent’s trio in 1969, but live music was then going out of fashion, and the two switched to their comedy act, in which Vincent was usually the straight man.

Soon after their break-up, Pesci landed a role in a low-budget film called The Death Collector, and got Vincent a part as a gambler who is shot sitting on the lavatory. Robert de Niro, who had seen the film, then suggested both actors to Scorsese, who was casting Raging Bull.

Vincent had bit parts in scores of films, but somehow he never quite found leading roles. His most prominent role came on television, as Phil Leotardo in The Sopranos, widely regarded as one of the best TV series ever made. As the boss of the Lupertazzi family and principal rival to James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano, Vincent appeared from the fifth series and was a major figure in the final series of the programme, eventually being killed by Tony in the last episode, after an FBI tip-off.

He is survived by his second wife, Kathleen, and his three children.

ANDREW MCKIE