About an hour after we sat down at a sidewalk table at Caffe Dante in Greenwich Village, each drinking a pot of green tea, a self-proclaimed huge fan interrupted our conversation, saying he hated to do so, but “I loved your work in The Sopranos.” This happens to Michael Imperioli. People know Christopher Moltisanti. They know Spider from Goodfellas. Both characters—Tony Soprano’s nervy, wide-eyed nephew and the Scorsese gangster—have some things in common: they’re earnest greenhorns caught up in chaotic violence, and at this point, they’re very much in Imperioli’s past. His presence now is calm and patient, an absolute flip side to the energy of those two, but their roles still follow him, even as he’s gone on to shows like Californication and The White Lotus. When the fan approached us, Imperioli shook his hand, receiving him gracefully, and later admitted to having no control over what people do with his image. “It is what it is,” he says.

This chill is no trickery. To use a metaphor Imperioli is fond of: if you’re digging for water in the desert, you can dig either a thousand holes one foot deep, or one hole a thousand feet deep. It seemed to me that he knew how to do both, how to bring an immediate presence into everything he did, every role he’s acted, and every small encounter. Imperioli’s a man who spends a lot of time sitting patiently with his own mind. I wanted to better understand his framework.