James Caan

James Caan, the curly-haired tough guy known to movie fans as the hotheaded Sonny Corleone of “The Godfather” and to television audiences as both the dying ...

Once again in demand, Caan starred in “For the Boys” with Bette Midler in 1991 as part of a song-and-dance team entertaining U.S. soldiers during World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars. He had begun to struggle with drug use and was devastated by the 1981 leukemia death of his sister, Barbara, who until then had been a guiding force in his career. Born March 26, 1939, in New York City, Caan was the son of a kosher meat wholesaler. Caan didn’t take a starring role in a TV series until 2003 but his first effort, “Las Vegas,” was an immediate hit. He also made a brief appearance in a flashback sequence in “The Godfather, Part II.” Caan left the show during the fourth season and it was later canceled. Caan was already a star on television, breaking through in the 1971 TV movie “Brian’s Song,” an emotional drama about Chicago Bears running back Brian Piccolo, who had died of cancer the year before at age 26. For much of the 1980s he made no films, telling people he preferred to coach his son Scott’s Little League games. Despite Coppola’s fears he had made a flop, the 1972 release was an enormous critical and commercial success and brought supporting actor Oscar nominations for Caan, Duvall and Al Pacino. 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 managed a long career despite drug problems, outbursts of temper and minor brushes with the law. Al Pacino wrote in an emailed statement that, “Jimmy was my fictional brother and my lifelong friend.

He's also well known for work in "Brian's Song," "Misery," and NBC's "Las Vegas."

Love to the family." "So sorry to hear the news. He twitted a picture of he and Brando on June 10 with the simple message: "The Best. End of tweet."

Top filmmakers including Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Mann and Rob Reiner have paid tribute to the “wildly gifted” James Caan and his “venturesome spirit”.

He tweeted: “He inspired everyone who has ever been in front of a camera. He inspired everyone who has ever been in front of a camera. Thinking of his family and sending my love.” He was a great training partner in the gym and a true friend, and I’ll miss him.— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) July 7, 2022 He said: “It’s hard to believe that he won’t be in the world anymore because he was so alive and daring. His movies were best of the best. So happy I got to know him. Jimmy was so supportive of Gary Sinise Foundation & my work w/ our veterans. Jimmy was so supportive of Gary Sinise Foundation & my work w/ our veterans. Love to the family.” A great actor, a brilliant director and my dear friend. Wonderful to know him & call him a pal.

Al Pacino, Francis Ford Coppola and Robert De Niro lead the tributes to the late Godfather actor.

"A great actor, a brilliant director and my dear friend," he added. "Jimmy was not just a great actor with total commitment and a venturesome spirit, but he had a vitality in the core of his being that drove everything from his art and friendship to athletics and very good times," he said in a statement. Joe Mantegna, who appeared in the third film in the Godfather series, paid his respects over Twitter. "One of the great gifts in being part of The Godfather family was becoming friends with James Caan. Rest In Peace Jimmy," he posted. Talia Shire, who played Caan's on-screen sister Connie Corleone told PA he was "a good man, a kind man, a family man, and a wildly gifted man - whose great talent will always be loved and remembered." Pacino, who starred as Michael Corleone, described him as a "great actor" and a "dear friend". Speaking of his "fictional brother and lifelong friend", Pacino said: "It's hard to believe that he won't be in the world any more because he was so alive and daring.

Director Coppola said Caan was 'one of the funniest people I've ever known'.

It tweeted: “We celebrate the life and career of @James_Caan and send condolences to his family. James Caan swooping in during the flashback scene at the end of The Godfather Part II is one of the all-time great star reveals. From Brian's Song to The Godfather to Misery and Elf, Jimmy's celluloid legacy lives on. He was always supportive of my career. A highlight of my career. He was always supportive of my career. A highlight of my career. He said: “It’s hard to believe that he won’t be in the world anymore because he was so alive and daring. He tweeted: “He inspired everyone who has ever been in front of a camera. He was a great training partner in the gym and a true friend, and I’ll miss him. Thinking of his family and sending my love.” He inspired everyone who has ever been in front of a camera.

The Oscar-nominated actor died on Wednesday, aged 82. Following news of James Caan's death this week, aged 82, many of his Hollywood collaborators and friends ...

Born March 26, 1939, in New York City, Caan was the son of a kosher meat wholesaler. He took a hiatus from acting for much of the '80s. So happy I got to know him. So happy I got to know him. Always wanted to be like him. Always wanted to be like him.

Superb actor whose defining role of Sonny Corleone in The Godfather found echoes in his colourful personal life.

In later years, Caan was content to have the security of a popular TV series, Las Vegas (2003-07), appearing as a former CIA agent now the head of security at the fictional Montecito resort and casino. In The Rain People, the first of the three films Caan made with Coppola, a certain vulnerability and warmth surfaced as he played a soft-hearted drifter. While studying at Hofstra, he became interested in acting and was soon taken on by the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York, where he studied under Sanford Meisner, whose technique was allied to the method. His first role was as a young thug terrorising Olivia de Havilland in Lady in a Cage (1964). Tough insouciance was his style, well suited to handsome but rather emotionless features. When his brother Ronnie was held at gunpoint by gangsters, Caan enlisted the help of his mafia pal Anthony “the Animal” Fiato. Caan arranged to meet and pay the kidnappers, then arrived with Fiato and his crew with guns and baseball bats. His first and last directorial effort, Hide in Plain Sight (1980), in which he starred as a man in search of his ex-wife and children, was generally given a chilly critical reception. Although he received professional help and was cured of the addiction, he was unemployable in Hollywood. After attending various schools, he entered two universities, Michigan State University, at which he was a football hero, and Hofstra University, Long Island, but failed to graduate from either. (The matter was settled out of court.) Then came the morning when he woke up in a friend’s flat to find 10 Los Angeles policemen standing over him with guns drawn. His defining role came as Sonny Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). Caan, who was nominated for an Oscar, was perfect as the hedonistic and volatile heir apparent to the Corleone family, whose bloody ways end in his own death. On another occasion, the FBI intercepted a phone conversation between Fiato and Caan concerning the actor Joe Pesci. Caan asked his friend to “take care” of Pesci after learning about an unpaid $8,000 bill from Pesci’s stay at a friend’s Miami hotel. More violence came his way as the brutal CIA man in Sam Peckinpah’s The Killer Elite and, in contrast, he portrayed Billy Rose, the gambling, philandering husband of Barbra Streisand’s Fanny Brice in Funny Lady, all in the same year.

He will be best remembered for his role in The Godfather, and for younger movie fans for playing Buddy's father in Elf.

I was so honored to have worked with him. I think he was just capable of so many things and that's what made him such a wonderful actor. He will be best remembered for his role in The Godfather, and for younger movie fans for playing Buddy's father in Elf.

Al Pacino, Francis Ford Coppola and Robert De Niro lead the tributes to the late Godfather actor.

"A great actor, a brilliant director and my dear friend," he added. "Jimmy was not just a great actor with total commitment and a venturesome spirit, but he had a vitality in the core of his being that drove everything from his art and friendship to athletics and very good times," he said in a statement. Filmmaker Michael Mann, who directed Caan in the 1981 heist thriller Thief, described his death as a "terrible and tragic loss". Joe Mantegna, who appeared in the third film in the Godfather series, paid his respects over Twitter. "One of the great gifts in being part of The Godfather family was becoming friends with James Caan. Rest In Peace Jimmy," he posted. Pacino, who starred as Michael Corleone, described him as a "great actor" and a "dear friend". Speaking of his "fictional brother and lifelong friend", Pacino said: "It's hard to believe that he won't be in the world any more because he was so alive and daring.

Oscar-nominated actor Caan, known for his roles in The Godfather, Thief and Misery, died on Wednesday aged 82. Brosnan, 69, shared a photograph of “the great ...

“You gave of yourself to the art of acting and performance to very end. So happy I got to know him. Always wanted to be like him. What a terrible and tragic loss. Mann, who directed 1981 neo-noir heist thriller Thief, said Caan was “not just a great actor with a venturesome spirit, but he had a vitality in the core of his being” which produced many “outrageous and hilarious anecdotes”. I shall cherish the memory of you always.”

James Edmund Caan was an athletic kid from the Bronx, the son of German-Jewish immigrants who grew up to play tough movie guys: sailors, football players, ...

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A Bronx native, he starred in countless movies and TV shows, but was most closely identified with the volatile character Sonny Corleone.

But he bounced back, starting in 1987 with the Vietnam War drama “Gardens of Stone,” another collaboration with Mr. Coppola, in which he played a tough sergeant. Among his roles were a love-struck sailor in “Cinderella Liberty” (1973), a self-destructive professor in “The Gambler” (1974), an anti-authority athlete in “Rollerball” (1975), a fierce World War II sergeant in “A Bridge Too Far” (1977) and a not-too-bright ex-con in “Thief” (1981), a favorite movie of his. Along the way, he checked into a rehab center for an addiction to cocaine that began after his sister, Barbara Licker, died of leukemia in 1981. The police questioned him at length in 1993 after a man fell to his death from the fire escape of a Los Angeles apartment where Mr. Caan was staying. He barely worked for the next six years and wound up deep in debt. “Everybody wants to do ‘Rocky 9’ and ‘Airport 96’ and ‘Jaws 7,’ ” he said in 1981. “I won ‘Italian of the Year’ twice in New York, and I’m not Italian.” But he did so only once, with “Hide in Plain Sight” (1980), in which he also acted, playing a man searching for his children after they and their mother are brought into the government’s witness-protection program. By the time “The Godfather” was released in 1972, Mr. Caan had established himself as a young actor worth keeping an eye on. He threw himself into the role so fully that for years, he said, strangers would say things to him like “Hey, don’t go through that tollbooth again.” “Brian’s Song” (1971), an early made-for-television movie, brought him to the attention of a wider audience. “I’ve been accused so many times,” he told Vanity Fair in 2004.

Actor James Caan, who starred as gangster Sonny Corleone in epic mafia film "The Godfather," died on Wednesday evening at age 82, his family said in a ...

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American actor James Caan, who was famed for his roles in The Godfather and Misery, has died at the age of 82.

However, his career went off the rails in the early eighties. He also won wide acclaim for his role in Misery opposite Kathy Bates and as Buddy's dad in Elf. "The family appreciates the outpouring of love and heartfelt condolences and asks that you continue to respect their privacy during this difficult time."

James Caan, the American actor renowned for his role as Sonny Corleone in the mafia epic The Godfather, as well as a string of key films in the 1970s, ...

He had five children, one of whom, Scott, followed him into acting, appearing in, and the reboot. In 2018 he appeared in Carol Morley’s Martin Amis adaptation , as the father of murder victim Jennifer Rockwell. Affected by the death of his sister as well as his copious drug use, Caan’s career imploded after he walked out of the Robert Ludlum thriller The Holcroft Covenant (he was replaced by Michael Caine). Caan would not appear in another Hollywood film until 1987, when Coppola cast him in his Vietnam war drama Gardens of Stone. He followed it up with the popular Alien Nation but fully re-established himself with the Stephen King adaptation Misery, directed by Rob Reiner, in which Caan played the bedbound author subject to the attentions of obsessive nurse/fan Kathy Bates. Caan was born in 1940 in the Bronx, New York City, the son of a kosher butcher. He appearing in comedies, such as, , Hollywood thrillers, such as , and , and occasional prestige dramas, including , a sprawling crime epic directed by James Gray, and Lars von Trier’s Brechtian parable . Caan also had a role in the successful animation , and in the fondly-remembered Christmas comedy , as Will Ferrell’s businessman father. "The family appreciates the outpouring of love and heartfelt condolences and asks that you continue to respect their privacy during this difficult time."

Caan's family said on Twitter that the actor died on 6 July, adding: "The family appreciate the outpouring of love and heartfelt condolences".

End of tweet". Actor James Caan - star of films including The Godfather and Elf - has died at the age of 82. Caan's family said on Twitter that the actor died on 6 July, adding: "The family appreciate the outpouring of love and heartfelt condolences".

American actor James Caan has died at the age of 82. We look back at a career which included classics such as El Dorado, The Godfather, Misery and Elf.

James Caan, who portrayed the hot-headed, ill-fated mobster Sonny Corleone in "The Godfather," has died at the age of 82, his family announced on Twitter.

"The Godfather," released in 1972, is regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made and is considered – well – the godfather of the gangster genre. Caan appeared in almost 100 movies over the course of his career. "The family appreciates the outpouring of love and heartfelt condolences and asks that you continue to respect their privacy during this difficult time."