Rolling Stone, Esquire, The Guardian, and TV Guide all hailThe Sopranosas the greatest television series of all time. Themob family dramais rightly credited with kicking off a golden age of television, as it paved the way forBreaking Bad,Mad Men,House Of Cards, and so much more prestige TV. Who can forget Carmela, Sil, Paulie, Christopher, Adriana, Big Pussy, and of course,Tony Soprano, the family patriarch played with charm, pathos, and brute force by the late, greatJames Gandolfini? But did you know Lin-Manuel Miranda of Hamilton fame was on The Sopranos? How about Lady Gaga? Here we look at 15 actors you forgot were on the Sopranos.
12Jon Favreau, Janeane Garofalo and Sandra Bernhard
Christopher Moltisanti really wanted to get into Hollywood. He tried screenwriting and even acting class. His cousin’s girlfriend worked for Jon Favreau and managed to get him onto a New York film set, where Favreau was directing Janeane Garofalo and Bernhard. Chrissie offers up some ad-lib dialog. But before long, his cousin’s girlfriend steals his heart and the future director of Iron Man steals his script ideas.
11Perez Hilton
“You’re robbing a benefit concert, you know that, right?” Years before he found fame mocking the rich and famous as blogger Perez Hilton, Mario Lavendeira played a college student on the wrong end of a mob-related stickup. In the Season 3 episode, getaway driver Jackie Jr. literally pees himself. Perez actually wrote about the show fairly often, even after it finished, once musing about the series' mysterious finale. And of course, making sure to blog about it when an actor’s son got himself arrested.
10Will Arnett
Years before he was the voice of Lego Batman, Will Arnett fought crime in a different way, starring as an FBI agent onThe Sopranos. The futureArrested Developmentcast member appeared in two episodes as husband to the FBI agent who went undercover to try to flip Adriana, in what became one of the show’s saddest stories.
9Tony Hale
Will Arnett wasn’t the only member of the Bluth family to make an appearance onThe Sopranosback in the day! Tony Hale played a nurse tending to Uncle Junior in the show’s third season, more than ten years before his debut on HBO’sVeep.
8David Lee Roth
The Executive Game was a high stakes night of poker organized by Tony’s father and uncle, which Tony took over and for a brief time, handed to ex-con Feech La Manna. It’s the game Tony and Jackie Aprile Sr. once robbed as kids and somehow lived to tell about it. The game is packed with celebrities who made cameos as themselves: NFL Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor, the late Frank Sinatra, Jr., and none other than Diamond Dave himself, Van Halen frontman and solo artist David Lee Roth. Yeow!
7Lady Gaga
DLR isn’t the only singer who showed up onThe Sopranos! FutureLady GagaStephanie Germanotta was just 15 years old when she made a small appearance in the ninth episode of the third season,The Telltale Moozadell. She’s one of the teenaged hooligans hanging out with AJ when they vandalize their high school.
6Annette Bening
Remember those dream sequences fromThe Sopranos? There was the food poisoning that gave way to Tony’s subconscious telling him that Big Puss had flipped to the feds. The season six episode,Join the Club, where a comatose Tony dreamt he was confused with a salesman named Kevin Finnerty. InThe Test Dream, Tony encounters multiple wacked wise guys and other deceased characters from his past: Carmine, Ralphie, Mikey, Richie, Puss, Gloria, even his own father. During the dream, he and Carmela have dinner with Meadow’s boyfriend’s parents, except they aren’t really Finn’s parents. They’re dead detective Vin and Annette Bening… As herself!
5Chandra Wilson
Janice Soprano was but one of many characters who could have used anger management classes, but she actually made it there, albeit by court order. Joining her in those classes? Classmate Evelyn Greenwood, played by Chandra Wilson, who won SAG and NAACP Image Awards for her role on the ABC drama Grey’s Anatomy.
4Lauren Bacall and Ben Kingsley
The show’s sixth and final season made room for some Hollywood crossovers, in-jokes and insults, courtesy of Christopher Moltisanti’s ill-advised foray into micro-budget horror movies, inspired by the success ofSawand his love ofThe Godfather. One such Hollywood moment was the appearance of Lauren Bacall and Ben Kingsley. The episodeLuxury Loungewas written byMad Mencreator Matthew Weiner and directed by Danny Leiner, of seminal garage rock band The Flying Guacamoles. We all know how much Little Steven loves garage rock, right?
3Lin-Manuel Miranda
No raps, no Founding Fathers, no Alexander Hamilton, and no Broadway accolades: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first TV role featured just a couple of lines, with the future Hamilton genius playing a hapless hotel bellman in an episode ofThe Sopranosfinal season. Not long after, he turned up in another HBO related property:Sex and the City: The Movie, and two more TV shows:Sesame StreetandThe Electric Company.
