The Godfather star James Caan dies aged 82
Died Harvey/press Photograph: Aged Caan, Anthony James Has Association Who 82
James Caan, the American actor renowned for his role as Sonny Corleone in the mafia epic , as well as a string of key films in the 1970s, has died aged 82.
The news was confirmed today that star passed away on Wednesday, July 6.
It is with great sadness that we inform you of the passing of Jimmy on the evening of July 6.
— James Caan (@James_Caan) July 7, 2022
The family appreciates the outpouring of love and heartfelt condolences and asks that you continue to respect their privacy during this difficult time.
End of tweet
In a statement on Mr Caan's Twitter account, it was posted "It is with great sadness that we inform you of the passing of Jimmy on the evening of July 6.
"The family appreciates the outpouring of love and heartfelt condolences and asks that you continue to respect their privacy during this difficult time."
Notorious for a hell-raising party lifestyle, Caan cut a swathe through Hollywood in the 1970s and early 80s, before abruptly quitting acting and for what the actor described a “pretty scary period” disappearing from public view, before engineering a comeback in the late 1980s, winning acclaim for films such as , and .
Caan was born in 1940 in the Bronx, New York City, the son of a kosher butcher. Keen not to follow his father into the meat trade, Caan initially aimed for a career as a football player, but got interested in acting after studying at Hofstra University in New York state – where he met future collaborator Francis Ford Coppola. Caan then joined the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre; his first significant acting credit was a small role in the 1961 Broadway production of Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole, a second world war play by William Goldman and his brother James.
After a string of minor film and TV appearances, Caan achieved leading man status in 1965 in Howard Hawks’ stock car racing drama , following it up with a role alongside John Wayne and Robert Mitchum in Hawks’ 1966 western . Caan was cast by a then-little-regarded Robert Altman in the 1967 space film , but his first significant association with the Hollywood new wave came with the 1969 film , directed by Coppola, in which Caan played a hitchhiking former college football star who is picked up by Shirley Knight’s dissatisfied middle-class housewife.
After playing the lead in a disappointing 1970 adaptation of John Updike’s celebrated novel Caan achieved a major breakthrough with Coppola’s . Caan originally auditioned for the role of Michael Corleone that eventually went to Al Pacino, and was favoured by the studio executives, but after Coppola insisted on Pacino, Caan was given another plum role, Corleone’s older brother Sonny. Caan received his only Oscar nomination, for best supporting actor, for the film, and his work remains notable for Sonny’s gruesome death scene, for which Caan said he was fitted with over 140 “squibs”, or explosive blood pellets, to simulate gunshot wounds.
C
aan then went on to star in string of high-profile films in the 1970s that bracketed him firmly in the new generation of American acting talent, including The Gambler (directed by Karel Reisz), buddy cop comedy Freebie and the Bean alongside Alan Arkin, and dystopian sci-fi parable Rollerball. He also appeared in more traditional vehicles, such as the Barbra Streisand musical Funny Lady and the second world war epic A Bridge Too Far. Caan also became famous for the roles he turned down, including One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Apocalypse Now, and Kramer Vs Kramer Thief, released in 1981 and directed by Michael Mann, in which Caan played a safecracker who takes on the mob, boded well for his ability to reinvent himself for the new decade, but Caan’s career would swiftly derail. 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 worked steadily thereafter, often trading on his abrasive manner and hard-living reputation. 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. In 2018 he appeared in Carol Morley’s Martin Amis adaptation , as the father of murder victim Jennifer Rockwell.
Caan was married four times: between 1961 and 1966 to Dee Jay Mathis, to Sheila Marie Ryan from 1975-76, to Ingrid Hajek from 1990-94, and to Linda Stokes from 1995 to 2017. He had five children, one of whom, Scott, followed him into acting, appearing in , and the reboot.