Who could forget Cypher, Joe Pantoliano’s sneaky, backstabbing jerk in the Wachowski sisters’ “The Matrix”? The actor was made for playing villains like this (in addition to portraying hot-headed, domineering characters like Ralph Cifaretto in “The Sopranos,” which fans consider one of the best TV shows of the past 25 years), and this often results in him dying on screen in one way or another. Yet Pantoliano is still holding a bit of a grudge against the Wachowskis for killing off Cypher.
In an October 2025 “Matrix” reunion panel at New York Comic Con (via Entertainment Weekly), Pantoliano revealed how the writer-director duo “lied” to him (on purpose) during the shooting of the 1999 action sci-fi classic. He said, “They lied to me! They f****** lied! I said, ‘Hey, you can’t kill me, right? You’re not gonna kill me?’ And Lilly said, ‘Hey, Lana, he doesn’t want us to kill him.’ And I heard Lana off camera, knowing that I could hear this, and she said, ‘Well, just lie to him and we’ll kill him anyway.'”
After the panel’s moderator jokingly tried to console him by saying that Cypher’s fate may not be “definitive,” the actor replied, “Don’t get me started, all right? They brought f****** Agent Smith back. It’s ‘The Matrix’!” Still, Pantoliano holds out hope for a potential return of his character in another sequel (even though there have been three follow-ups already).
Joe Pantoliano has had numerous deaths on the big and small screen
After starting his acting career in the early 1970s, it only took Joe Pantoliano six years to get his first fictional demise. Playing Private Angelo Maggio in the three-part TV mini-series “From Here to Eternity,” the actor’s character was dead by the end of the show. And that was only the beginning.
Once he began to land more parts in bigger movies and TV series, Pantoliano saw his characters die more frequently than the average actor. Well, he’s not quite on the level of Sean Bean from “Game of Thrones” — the fantasy series that constantly killed off characters — but he’s not that far behind, either. To date, Pantoliano has died over two dozen times in various films and TV shows, such as “Running Scared,” the 1999 “Godzilla” remake, and the cult-classic “The Highlander” series, among others.
Pantoliano is still a fantastic, accomplished, and distinguished character actor with multiple awards and several nominations. Perhaps the most notable is his Emmy win for being an outstanding supporting actor in “The Sopranos” (which happens to be the state of New Jersey’s most popular TV show). He’s just that guy who you instantly recognize wherever he turns up, and that alone is a respectable accomplishment in show business — especially if you’re not usually the lead and your character dies on a regular basis.
