Charley Scalies, actor on iconic series 'The Wire' and 'The Sopranos,' dies

Charley Scalies , actor in the iconic series ' The Wire' and 'The Sopranos', has died at the age of 84 after a long battle with Alzheimer 's disease, The Hollywood Reporter (THR) reported.

Charley Scalies was a Philadelphia-born character actor who played longshoreman and union organizer Thomas 'Horseface' Pakusa in the second season of The Wire and Tony's high school football coach in a dream sequence on ' The Sopranos.'

Scalies died Thursday at a nursing facility in Phoenixville , Pennsylvania, after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease, his daughter Anne Marie Scalies told The Hollywood Reporter.

The actor appeared in all 12 episodes of HBO 's 'The Wire' during its second season in 2003 as Horseface, the imprisoned former longshoreman at the Port of Baltimore and devoted to his corrupt boss, Frank Sobotka (played by Chris Bauer).

"Like every other character I've been fortunate enough to play, Horseface lives inside me," he said in a 2019 interview, THR reports.

Scalies returned to HBO the following year in The Sopranos' fifth season, "The Test Dream," where he starred as Coach Molinaro .

His tough-guy character appears in a dream, berating the vengeful Tony (James Gandolfini) for taking "the easy way out" by becoming a criminal and squandering his potential, according to the trade magazine.

Charles Joseph Scalies Jr. was born in Philadelphia on July 19, 1940, and grew up in the South Side of the city in a house above his father's pool hall , where as a child he entertained customers with jokes and Al Jolson impressions.

Scalies' resume includes the films Liberty Heights (1999), directed by Homicide producer Barry Levinson, and Kevin Smith's Jersey Girl (2004), as well as guest appearances on 'Law & Order,' 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,' and 'Cold Case.'