NY- When push comes to shove, he’ll always be Tony Soprano.
James Gandolfini – the “Sopranos” TV mobster who made a living rubbing out nuisances, including his own kin – whacked a self-proclaimed “No. 1 fan” in the face at JFK Airport yesterday.
Sporting a grizzly beard and wary with jet lag, Gandolfini had just stepped off a red-eye flight from LA after Sunday night’s SAG awards when autograph hound Jason Ertischek, 24, of Brooklyn approached him with a piece of paper and pen in hand.
“Can I be a ‘Sopranos’ baby?” Ertischek asked the star in a whiny, tough-guy accent.
Gandolfini, with new wife Deborah Lin by his side, ignored Ertischek as paparazzi snapped away. Then the hulking actor suddenly whipped around and smushed the man’s face with his hand.
“I spoke to him in a kind of Tony Soprano accent, like, ‘Yo, Tony.’ All of a sudden, he turned around and choked me by the neck and punched me with a closed fist to the right side of my face,” Ertischek told The Post.
“It was painful. I went to the emergency room and was there for five hours.”
Ertischek – who some paparazzi described as a pesky publicity seeker who taunts celebs to get reactions – said the star then dragged him aside to whisper not-so-sweet obscenities in his ear.
“He was cursing at me a lot, saying things like, ‘You f – – -er,’ ” he said.
Later, outside, Ertischek asked Gandolfini: “Yo, why’d you hit me? I’m here to greet you, congratulate you on the SAG award. . . . You whacked me. I don’t wanna get whacked.”
Gandolfini replied, “Well, that’s how you do it.”
Ertischek said Gandolfini later feebly tried to make amends by agreeing to a photo.
“He was like, ‘You’re going to sue me. I’m sorry I flipped out. I shouldn’t have done what I did,’ ” Ertischek said.
He added that he is considering filing a police report and suing.
“I don’t taunt celebrities. I have been an autograph seeker at least 10 years,” he said. “I put on a little voice for less than 20 seconds and then, boom, that happened?”
Gandolfini did not return a call for comment.
One paparazzo said Ertischek had also heckled Katherine Heigl at the airport a few weeks ago, handing the star – known for trying to kick her smoking habit – nicotine patches while plastering his body with them.
The Brooklyn man admitted to the stunt but said he did it because his mom is “a huge fan” of Heigl and he wanted to get her autograph for her.