Charley Scalies, perhaps best known for his role as Thomas “Horseface” Pakusa on season two of The Wire and his appearance as Tony Soprano’s high school football coach in The Sopranos, has passed away at age 84. The Philadelphia-born character actor died on May 1, 2025, in a nursing facility in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, after a long-fought battle with Alzheimer’s, his daughter Anne Marie Scalies stated via The Hollywood Reporter. 

Scalies’ character, Horseface, an incarcerated Baltimore longshoreman, appeared in all 12 episodes of HBO’s The Wire season two, and Scalies said of the character in a 2019 interview, “As with all the other characters I’ve been blessed to portray, Horseface lives inside of me. I invite him out to play as needed.”

Scalies also appeared in a season five episode of HBO’s The Sopranos as Coach Molinaro. In the episode “The Test Dream,” Scalies appears as Tony Soprano’s football coach in a dream sequence where he admonishes Tony for his criminal antics, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Born Charles Joseph Scalies on July 19, 1940, in South Philadelphia, Scalies was the youngest of three siblings. According to The Hollywood Reporter, his knack for entertaining began in his father’s pool hall, where he entertained patrons with impressions and jokes. In high school and college, Scalies and a friend began performing a stand-up comedy act.

Following college, Scalies took a step back from entertaining and founded his own consulting firm with a focus on auditing and quality management, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Scalies returned to entertainment in the early 1990s, starring in community theatre productions in Pennsylvania. In 1995, Scalies landed small parts in Condition Red starring James Russo (Not a Stranger, Django Unchained), Two Bits, starring Al Pacino (The Irishman, The Godfather), and 12 Monkeys, directed by Terry Gilliam (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Brazil), before landing his most recognizable roles.

Scalies is survived by his wife of 62 years and his five children.