James Caan, Oscar nominee for ‘The Godfather,’ dies at 82

By Associated Press

James Caan, the curly-haired robust man identified to film followers because the hotheaded Sonny Corleone of “The Godfather” and to tv audiences as each the dying soccer participant within the traditional weeper “Brian’s Song” and the on line casino boss in “Las Vegas,” has died. He was 82.

His supervisor Matt DelPiano mentioned he died on Wednesday. No trigger was given and Caan’s household, who requests privateness, mentioned that no additional particulars could be launched right now.

Many of his collaborators wrote condolences on Twitter on Thursday.

Adam Sandler, who acted with him in “Bulletproof” and “That’s My Boy” wrote that he, “Loved him very much. Always wanted to be like him. So happy I got to know him. Never ever stopped laughing when I was around that man. His movies were best of the best.”

A soccer participant at Michigan State University and a sensible joker on manufacturing units, Caan was a grinning, good-looking performer with an athlete’s swagger and muscular construct. He managed a protracted profession regardless of drug issues, outbursts of mood and minor brushes with the regulation.

Caan had been a favorite of Francis Ford Coppola because the Sixties, when Coppola solid him for the lead in “Rain People.” He was primed for a featured function in “The Godfather” as Sonny, the No. 1 enforcer and eldest son of Mafia boss Vito Corleone.

Sonny Corleone, a violent and reckless man who carried out many killings, met his personal finish in probably the most jarring film scenes in historical past. Racing to seek out his sister’s husband, Corleone stops at a toll sales space that he discovers is unnervingly empty of shoppers. Before he can escape he’s minimize down by a seemingly countless fusillade of machine-gun hearth. For many years after, he as soon as mentioned, strangers would strategy him on the road and jokingly warn him to remain away from toll roads.

Caan bonded with Brando, Robert Duvall and different solid members and made it some extent to get everybody laughing throughout an in any other case tense manufacturing, typically dropping his pants and “mooning” a fellow actor or crew member. Despite Coppola’s fears he had made a flop, the 1972 launch was an infinite vital and industrial success and introduced supporting actor Oscar nominations for Caan, Duvall and Al Pacino.

Caan was already a star on tv, breaking via within the 1971 TV film “Brian’s Song,” an emotional drama about Chicago Bears operating again Brian Piccolo, who had died of most cancers the 12 months earlier than at age 26. It was among the many hottest and wrenching TV films in historical past and Caan and co-star Billy Dee Williams, who performed Piccolo’s teammate and finest pal Gale Sayers, have been nominated for finest actor Emmys.

After “Brian’s Song” and “The Godfather,” he was one in all Hollywood’s busiest actors, showing in “Hide in Plain Sight” (which he additionally directed), “Funny Lady” (reverse Barbra Streisand), “The Killer Elite” and Neil Simon’s “Chapter Two,” amongst others. He additionally made a quick look in a flashback sequence in “The Godfather, Part II.”

But by the early Nineteen Eighties he started to bitter on movies, although Michael Mann’s 1981 neo-noir heist movie “Thief,” during which he performed knowledgeable safecracker searching for a means out, is amongst his most admired movies.

“The fun of it was taken away,” he instructed an interviewer in 1981. “I’ve done pictures where I’d rather do time. I just walked out of a picture at Paramount. I said you haven’t got enough money to make me go to work every day with a director I don’t like.”

He had begun to wrestle with drug use and was devastated by the 1981 leukemia loss of life of his sister, Barbara, who till then had been a guiding drive in his profession. For a lot of the Nineteen Eighties he made no movies, telling individuals he most popular to teach his son Scott’s Little League video games.

Short on money, Caan was employed by Coppola for the main function within the 1987 movie “Gardens of Stone.” The film, about life at Arlington National Cemetery, proved too grim for many audiences, nevertheless it renewed Caan’s appearing profession.

He returned to full-fledged stardom reverse Kathy Bates in “Misery” in 1990. In the movie, based mostly on Stephen King’s novel, Caan is an writer taken captive by an obsessed fan who breaks his ankles to maintain him from leaving. Bates received an Oscar for the function.

Once once more in demand, Caan starred in “For the Boys” with Bette Midler in 1991 as a part of a song-and-dance staff entertaining U.S. troopers throughout World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars. The following 12 months he performed a tongue-in-cheek model of Sonny Corleone within the comedy “Honeymoon in Vegas,” tricking Nicolas Cage into betting his girlfriend, Sarah Jessica Parker, in a high-stakes poker recreation so he can spirit her away and attempt to persuade her to marry him.

Other later movies included “Flesh and Bone,” “Bottle Rocket” and “Mickey Blue Eyes.” He launched himself to a brand new technology enjoying Walter, the workaholic, stone-faced father of Buddy’s Will Ferrell in “Elf.”

Caan didn’t take a starring function in a TV collection till 2003 however his first effort, “Las Vegas,” was a right away hit. When the collection debuted, he was a on line casino surveillance chief coping with cheaters and rivals of the fictional Montecito Resort and Casino.

His character rose to grow to be boss of the Montecito however remained the robust man who had realized judo in an undercover division of the U.S. authorities. Caan left the present throughout the fourth season and it was later canceled.

Born March 26, 1939, in New York City, Caan was the son of a kosher meat wholesaler. He was a star athlete and sophistication president at Rhodes High School and, after attending Michigan State and Hofstra University, he studied on the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater underneath Sanford Meisner.

Following a quick stage profession, he moved to Hollywood. He made his film debut in a quick uncredited function in 1963 in Billy Wilder’s “Irma La Douce,” then landed a task as younger thug who terrorizes Olivia de Havilland in “Lady in a Cage.” He additionally appeared reverse John Wayne and Robert Mitchum within the 1966 Western “El Dorado” and Harrison Ford within the 1968 Western “Journey to Shiloh.”

Married and divorced 4 occasions, Caan had a daughter, Tara, and sons Scott, Alexander, James and Jacob.