He was only 6 foot 1, but his physical presence filled every room. When his face turned to rage, it was pure and unmistakable. And when it was turned towards you, you simply couldn’t look away. Catching his glare was like looking into the headlights of a Mack truck coming straight towards you. Such was the experience of being an actor alongside the late great James Gandolfini on the set of The Sopranos. 

Gandolfini played the mob boss Tony Soprano, a legendary acting performance that earned him widespread praise, including three Emmy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and one Golden Globe Award. Gandolfini took audiences into Tony’s gangster underworld and the tribulations of New Jersey mob life. And along the way, contending with deep questions of parenthood, morality, and human nature. 

Tony is revealed to be a dark, craven, but ultimately complex figure. But perhaps his defining characteristic was his anger. And Gandolfini—a former bouncer in his own right—crafted this to perfection.

Gandolfini was once asked, “how do you get yourself to act so angry?” His response was telling: He made himself angry. He didn’t act angry, he cultivated it. And he had a very specific technique: When he knew he had a scene coming up with an angry outburst (and there were many), he slowly built up his anger throughout the day. He would purposely walk around, for the entire day, with a rock in his shoe. And by the time the shoot came, he would unleash all of that accumulated into the scene, and onto his fellow actors. He remarked, “It’s silly, but it works.”

And to a devastating effect. One could argue that there have been better actors at various things, but you’ll be hard-pressed to see anyone do anger better than Gandolfini. The rage feels real because it was real. 

Gandolfini isn’t alone, and the usefulness of anger extends far and beyond the world of acting. Athletes, for example, are some of the best at harnessing the motivating power of anger. Michael Jordan was a master at not only harnessing it but finding it. From an opponent’s trash talk, a reporter’s dismissal, or a rival coach refusing to shake his hand in a restaurant, Michael found ample opportunity to “take it personally.” And like the rock in James Gandolfini’s shoe, he channeled this anger into his game. 

From acting to sports to art, anger can be an asset. A special fuel. But before we can learn to harness it, we have to answer a more rudimental question: What is anger? 

The Psychology of Anger

Anger, like all emotions, is an inner subjective experience. And it can be understood from three perspectives: there’s the physiological response (e.g., increased heart rate and breathing), the stereotyped thoughts (e.g., feeling wronged, plotting a response), and the associated behaviors (e.g. the drive to act out against the perceived source). This distinction is key: Not all feelings of anger are necessarily accompanied by specific thoughts or result in specific actions. Anger is a feeling which naturally motivates thoughts and actions, but these are distinct elements and are not inevitable. 

What people do with these feelings and physiology, differs from person to person. We’re often awful at understanding the reasons why we feel a certain way. And just like all other emotions, anger provides an important signal, which, if understood can help you adjust your behavior or way of thinking. 

In everyday life, this introspective element is key. For example, imagine coming out of a meeting with colleagues and feeling a distinct sense of anger. But why? They liked your ideas, and they agreed to use your proposal. Was it a comment that your boss made? Was it an intrusive, anger-inspiring thought about something totally unrelated that just happened to pop into your head? The possibilities are plentiful. But whatever the true answer is, understanding the source can help guide your future behavior. 

This is the beauty of the “intentional” anger; the likes utilized by Gandolfini and Jordan: You know the true source of the anger. The attention then turns to learn how to harness it. And once this is achieved, anger becomes not something you’re reacting to, but a tool at your disposal. In this way, anger is like modern technology: a good servant, but a poor master. 

Anger, Motivation, and Fury in Sports

When anger is intentionally cultivated, it stands the best chance of being harnessed. The trick then becomes how and when to use this tool. Like Jordan, many in the sports world have found anger to be an essential source of motivation. Closing pitchers in baseball, for example, know this all too well. Their job is simple: Come in for the last few outs of the game. Throw fire, strike everyone out, and close out the game. If there’s a role for a quick burst of anger anywhere in the sleepy doldrums of baseball, it’s there. 

Closers have used a variety of tactics here. Hall of Famer Trevor Hoffman, for example, got into the mood with “Hell’s Bells” blasting in the home stadium every time he’d come into a game. Dodgers’ Kenley Jansen credits his improvement as a closer with learning how to get angry with himself over previous poor performances. “You have to be angry,” Jansen told MLB.com. “Enough is enough. Sometimes you just put a little more into it. You want to get better. Sometimes anger helps.”

But the award for most creative technique would go to Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ pitcher Tyler Glasnow. He has a specific picture on his phone which he only looks at right before he enters a game. It’s a picture of a person’s face: Convicted pharma Bro Martin Shkreli. 

There are many paths to anger. It’s important to highlight, however, that while anger can be a great source of motivation, it’s a mercurial fuel. In order to be used effectively, one needs to be able to harness it. Anger alone won’t result in improved performance, but instead, a kind of controlled fury. 

Athletes in combat sports like boxing and MMA know this all too well. Anger comes much more naturally here. When you’ve got a person across from you attempting bodily harm, you hardly need a pre-game cue. The skill comes from what one does with this response; the discipline needed over one’s emotional response. If one becomes too engulfed by their own anger, all technique is lost. The knowledge of one’s opponent’s strengths and vulnerabilities, the footwork, the overall fight strategy, and above all - the defensive posturing, are subsumed by emotion when one “sees red”. 

This is why, of course, beyond the technical aspects, combat sports and martial arts place a premium on discipline. Mike Tyson, is arguably the best, and also the angriest, boxer of all time. He is the poster child for controlled fury: When he harnessed it, he was unbeatable. But his lowest points - such as biting Evander Holyfield’s ear, were when his anger took the driver’s seat. Put simply, his career was defined by his ability or inability to harness his anger. He once remarked, “Emotion is more than just anger. When I am performing, I need emotion, but I need control, too. Emotion drives the best performance and is necessary, but it must be controlled.”

If we’re looking for examples of successful controlled fury in sports, we can do no better than The New Zealand National Rugby Team, The All Blacks. This is placed front and center in the fabled pre-match ritual: the Maori war cry known as the haka dance. You might think a group of 15 large, muscular rugby players is intimidating enough. But the Haka Dance takes this to a different level. The team lines up, facing the opposing team with chests pushed forward, slapping their thighs, tongues outstretched, and unblinking eyes so intense as to almost bulge out of their heads. Imagine all the fury of a raging Tony Soprano, but harnessed into a coordinated dance. It’s an intimidating, ritualistic display of equal parts rage and discipline; the distillation of controlled fury. 

Emotions, Anger and Decision-Making

Anger, like guilt, is a mercurial force. We’re not always sure what kind of actions it’s going to produce, and how we’ll come to think about it later. Like all intense emotions, it can lead to impulsive decision-making. Learning how to understand it, and how to harness it, is key. Only then can we decide how we might want to cultivate it for a specific occasion. 

To this end, there’s a lot we can learn from the world’s great practitioners of controlled fury. By studying their techniques, we can walk a mile in their shoes and adopt their approach. Until then, take a simple lesson from one of the pioneers of controlled fury, James Gandolfini: before walking around in your own shoes, be sure to check them for small rocks. 

Photo by Atharva Tulsi on Unsplash

References for The Psychology of Anger and Controlled Fury

Cherry, M. E., & Flanagan, O. E. (2018). The moral psychology of anger. Rowman & Littlefield.

Itzkoff, D. (June, 2013). "James Gandolfini Is Dead at 51; a Complex Mob Boss in 'The Sopranos'". The New York Times. 

Jordan, C (June, 2013). "In Jersey, Gandolfini remembered as regular guy". USA Today. 

Newby, J. (Dec, 2020) Rays' Tyler Glasnow Used Picture of Martin Shkreli for Angry Motivation Prior to Games, PopCulture

NJ Spotlight News (June, 2013) James Gandolfini Was a Jersey Guy Who Helped Change Television, https://www.youtube.com/watch

Nussbaum, E. (June 20, 2013). "How Tony Soprano Changed Television". The New Yorker. Condé Nast. Archived from the original on June 17, 2020. 

Martin, R. (February, 2021) How to be angry, Psyche Magazine

Parnell, D. (2014) Mike Tyson: "You Have To Feel Comfortable Being Uncomfortable.", Forbes

Toribo, J. (April 2021) 'Enough is enough' -- Jansen has new edge, MLB.com