Soprano's Hit Man Shot By Laser

Ask actor John Fiore, of Law & Order and Sopranos fame, about his eyes, and he is instantly energized. “They’re great!” he booms. “It’s been really good. An amazing thing.” Fiore is talking about the remarkable improvement in his eyesight since he underwent LASIK eye surgery by Dr. Nilesh M. Sheth at the Sheth-Horsley Eye Center in Stoneham, MA.

Millions of Americans know Fiore as homicide detective Tony Profaci, a role Fiore portrayed for nine seasons on the hit TV crime drama Law & Order. Fiore then changed sides to play calculating hit man Gigi Cestone on The Sopranos from 2000 to 2004 and mobster Vinnie Salerno on the daytime drama Guiding Light.

What most people don’t know is that today’s seriously good looking, confident performer with the bright brown eyes grew up a typical kid who wore, broke, and lost countless glasses and contact lenses, beginning around seventh grade.

Since boyhood, “I never was really without them,” Fiore explains. “Some people can have the same pair of glasses for 20 years. But I’m very rough to begin with. You know how many pairs I sat on? You know how many I stepped on? I was nearsighted, so I’d take them off to get close to something, then I’d forget, and then kreeetttchhh...oh, there they are!”

 

 

Never again, thanks to a procedure that took just a few minutes in the office. “You go home, lie in bed a few hours, get up, your eyes feel a little scratchy, and by the next day, your vision has profoundly improved.

“Each hour and day you get better and better. You’re driving around. You can see as clearly as can be.  And you say, ‘Wow,’ all those years of glasses.”

On stage, being able to see clearly has been a bit startling. When he was on camera, Fiore wore contacts some of the time, but he often chose to not wear any lenses. “I used to take the contacts out so I couldn’t see people clearly. This way, I would have more guts, because I wouldn’t sense all the eyeballs on me. But my first acting job after I got the surgery, it was, ‘Oh, I can’t do that anymore.’

“There’s this 20- or 30-person crew. You know how it is. Everybody’s looking at the actors up there. Before, it was almost like dimming the lights: I can’t see out there, so who cares? So now I permanently put on the light switch. But it’s been worth it.”

Dr. Sheth is awesome. He is just fabulous, very skilled,” Fiore adds.

What’s Fiore working on now? He is marketing the film Johnny Slade’s Greatest Hits—Fiore is both producer and star for this camp satire about a lounge singer hired to be the “voice” of the mob. The film has brought home best screenplay and best feature film kudos five festivals (visit www.johnnyslade.com for a preview). Next up? A thriller about a killer involved in automobile restoration.