Dennis Farina was one of my first favourite actors, and he’s still one of my favourites. He was and remains a consummate character actor – he usually played tough guys, often the kind of villain who would threaten to murder somebody for little or no reason, but he was fucking phenomenal at it, and he frequently made it hilarious, as when he played Jimmy Serrano in Midnight Run, Ray Bones in Get Shorty, and Cousin Avi in Snatch. He also displays remarkable tenderness playing the father of Jennifer Lopez’s character in Steven Soderbergh’s masterpiece Out of Sight. (All four of these are great movies!)
Given that I survived a pulmonary embolism in 2016 which sent me to the ICU for 12 days and very nearly killed me, it’s always wounded me that one of those was the thing that took him from us at the age of 69 in 2013. He was a true legend an’ a pure fuckin’ badass, and I miss him terribly.