James Caan

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, ...

You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic.

Caan, best known for playing Sonny Corleone in 1970s gangster film, The Godfather, died on Wednesday, his family said.

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. Caan recounted becoming so angry when he realised the scene was not included that he walked out of the screening. For much of the 1980s he made no films, telling people he preferred to coach his son Scott’s Little League games. One of three siblings, Caan began acting on television in 1961. “It’s hard to believe that he won’t be in the world anymore because he was so alive and daring. 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.” So happy I got to know him. The statement was posted on Caan’s Twitter account on Thursday but did not mention a cause of death. Always wanted to be like him. “Jimmy made it so funny,” said Duvall. “I’ve done pictures where I’d rather do time. In an article in the Hollywood Reporter marking the 50-year anniversary of the first Godfather film this year, actor Robert Duvall said that Caan was a buoyant presence on the set and made the first film the most fun to work on.

JAMES Caan, the tough-guy US actor best known for playing tragic and hot-tempered gangster heir Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, has died aged 82, ...

(AP) -- 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 US actor rose to fame for his portrayal of Sonny Corleone in the mafia film.

End of tweet." They say never meet your heroes, but he proved that to be very very wrong". In his later years, he would become prolific on Twitter, building a large following and often capping his posts with the phrase "End of tweet". Caan briefly disappeared from public view in the early 1980s during what he has described as "a pretty scary period" brought on by drug use and his sister's death. He had originally auditioned for the role of Michael Corleone, and was reportedly favoured for the role by studio executives. Among the tributes to Caan, fellow actor Gary Sinise wrote on Twitter that it had been "wonderful to know him and call him a pal", while filmmaker Rob Reiner said he "loved working with him".

Godfather co-star Al Pacino praised Caan as "a great actor, a brilliant director and my dear friend".

One of three siblings, Caan began acting on television in 1961. James Edmund Caan was born in the Bronx borough of New York City on Mar 26, 1940 to German Jewish immigrants. Other nominations included four Golden Globes and an Emmy.

Caan's career spanned six decades and included roles in a broad range of movies from Misery to Elf. Read more at straitstimes.com.

One of three siblings, Caan began acting on television in 1961. Francis Ford Coppola, who directed Caan in The Godfather and 1969 movie The Rain People, said Caan’s films “and the many great roles he played will never be forgotten.” Other nominations included four Golden Globes and an Emmy.

Drama, comedy, suspense, action, kids' movies — there was truly nothing he couldn't do. Who else could star in both “The Godfather” and “Elf”?

Caan spent much of the ’80s in a self-imposed exile, burned out from his busy ’70s, battling addictions and caring for his children. Caan may have had visions of John Travolta’s “Pulp Fiction” comeback when he accepted a supporting role in the up-and-coming Wes Anderson’s debut feature, a cockeyed caper picture about a crew of incompetent criminals. Set in the then-distant future of 2018, it’s a prescient warning of the dangers of corporate overreach, overt violence and class warfare in sports entertainment — and society in general — and Caan conveys both the character’s fierce physicality and his intellect with ease. On paper, the character is reprehensible — but Caan invests him with a lovelorn sweetness that lends the picture, and its central conflict, some unexpected ripples. As with most of the actors associated with “The Godfather,” Caan was quickly elevated to leading roles in the wake of its astonishing success. Caan wears the heaviness of the character like a winter coat; he does what he has to do to get by, forever grasping for the last big score that always seems just out of reach. Caan’s breakthrough role came the following year in Francis Ford Coppola’s sensational adaptation of the best seller by Mario Puzo. The director — who had used Caan to great effect, in a much gentler role, in “The Rain People” (1969) — cast the actor as Sonny, the hot-tempered oldest brother in the Corleone clan. Caan and Williams’s easy rapport sells the relationship, and Caan is truly heartbreaking in the closing scenes, which prove a too-rare showcase for his tenderness and warmth. More than that, he had maintained an active presence on Twitter, frequently sharing images from his films and memories of his collaborators and always concluding his messages with the phrase “End of tweet.” Few actors understood that character like Caan, who plays the safecracker, jewel thief and ex-con Frank as a man who will break the law but not his moral code, and who so longs for the fruits of his labor that he carries around a collage of his imagined perfect, suburban life like a mobile vision board. But just the year before, he had starred in a film still remembered for its ability to make men cry. The best of that bunch may well have been this spiky tale of a privileged English professor who finds that his high-society pedigree and formidable intellect are no match for a spiraling gambling addiction.

The tough-guy American actor was best known for playing tragic and hot-tempered gangster heir Sonny Corleone in The Godfather.

Love to the family." And the only Jew I knew who could calf rope with the best of them. Caan was married four times, and had five children. "Jimmy was one of the greatest. "Unlike actors that hide, or that don't like to give autographs or be recognised... I'm very thankful that people still remember that I'm alive and all that."

Sad news from the world of movies, as actor James Caan died Wednesday, his family announced on his Twitter account. Caan, 82, had a film and television ...

During his time as an actor, Caan, who played football at Michigan State in the 1950s, was also well-known for playing roles in several iconic sports movies. Early in his career, Caan starred in " Brian's Song," where he played the role of Brian Piccolo, the real-life Chicago Bears halfback who died of cancer at age 26. Caan, 82, had a film and television career that spanned seven decades.

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."

To film buffs, James Caan was a screen legend, but to a younger audience he's the grumpy dad from Elf. Here's your guide to his most iconic roles.

But Caan — who actually learned to crack a real safe on his own — carries the film, and often spoke about it as the movie he was most proud of. "There was one guy playing a photographer who had one of those old box cameras and, as I went in there, I grabbed the friggin' thing and I smashed it, literally threw it on the ground," he said. In an interview for the film's 50th anniversary, Caan said he "just let go" and was given "a certain amount of freedom", and it shows.

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.

Born in 1940, James Caan starred in several popular Hollywood films, and eve earned an Oscar nomination for the portrayal of Sonny Carlene in the 1972 cult ...

He also appeared in the TV dramas like 'Las Vegas’ and ‘Hawaii Five-0’. However, the real shot of fame in his armour came with his portrayal of hotheadedSonny Corleonein the 1972 cult movie ‘The Godfather’. For his role as the oldest son of mobster Vito Corleone, James Caan earned a lot of praises and even an The family members also requested to respect their privacy in these tough times. He also appeared in the TV dramas like 'Las Vegas’ and ‘Hawaii Five-0’. However, the real shot of fame in his armour came with his portrayal of hotheaded The family members also requested to respect their privacy in these tough times.

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.

The late Hollywood legend James Caan, star of The Godfather, has had a superb movie career that extends well beyond his most famous role as Sonny Corleone.

Caan never winks or acts like he’s in a comedy; he’s bewildered and even a little afraid of Buddy and (reasonably) wants nothing to do with him, but once he realizes the truth that he’s his son, he takes him in anyway … and learns to love him, just like the rest of us. “Oh, he’s a fucking wacko!” Caan would later say of von Trier, recalling that his big scene in the car with Kidman required him “sitting in the back of this thing for hours. Lars von Trier’s poisonous diatribe on the hypocrisy of small-town American “values,” Dogville builds to its final revelation, which is that Nicole Kidman’s innocent victim Grace is, in fact, the daughter of a powerful mobster, identified in the credits only as “the Big Man.” When the character arrives, Caan plays him with a mixture of menace and parental tough love — not that he entirely enjoyed the experience of making the film. Of all the gangsters Caan would play after The Godfather, this one is the best. It was a good reminder of the soulfulness he could locate in even the most dishonest of individuals. In this James Gray drama, James Caan starred alongside Mark Wahlberg, who would remake one of Caan’s own films, The Gambler, more than a decade later. (His one Emmy nomination was for this film.) It is virtually guaranteed that an older male member of your family has cried watching Brian’s Song; the one-two punch of this and The Godfather made Caan a huge, huge star. Caan was in Texas for only two weeks to film Wes Anderson’s first movie, and Anderson would later wonder if Caan entirely understood what he was doing there with all those amateurs. (This was an ABC Movie of the Week.) But the power of Piccolo’s friendship with Hall of Famer Gale Sayers (played by Billy Dee Williams), along with the weepie script, won him over, and Brian’s Song was such a hit it was the highest-rated-ever TV movie at the time. What’s heartbreaking about Axel is that he’s smart enough to know better, but what The Gambler illustrates so convincingly is that “knowing better” means nothing to an addict, and Caan captures both the character’s confidence and despair, the roller coaster of emotions that feed him, even if self-destruction is the only possible outcome. Mann brought out a precision in Caan, who got a rare opportunity with Thief to enjoy a star vehicle, one that catered to his steely strengths. Anyone wanting to understand Caan’s appeal should start with Caan’s obvious highlight, 1972’s The Godfather, in which he plays Sonny, the volcanic eldest son in the Corleone family, whose graphic death is one of the most famous and harrowing in all of cinema.

You're going to read an awful lot about Sonny Corleone over the next few days. That's only natural. James Caan, the tough leading man who portrayed the ...

We kept him laughing, and he kept us laughing,” Favreau told Rolling Stone. “It took him a while to get with the programming. It’s great to see Jimmy in a way that we’re not used to seeing him in and it adds to the effect. The headlines you’ll read this week will likely focus on “The Godfather.” But every December — and maybe even July — we’ll be focused on “Elf,” waiting for the moment when Caan’s Walter puts on that Santa coat and begrudgingly belts “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.” In “Elf,” he was able to channel a workaholic publishing executive who refuses to reprint a children’s book missing a couple of pages in the name of the almighty dollar, and who is annoyed — if not terrified — to learn he might unknowingly have a son from a previous relationship. I surrounded him with a lot of improvisers, like Andy Richter and Kyle Gass and Amy Sedaris. When I’m working with improv people, I give them the green light to just bring it and try things. My mother, Mindy, adores “Elf” more than any other film (including “The Godfather”) and, as a result, fires it up at least once every December (and usually again in July) to watch with my brother Tyler and me. Caan might have seemed like an unusual choice for a broad holiday comedy, the seriousness of his career and sternness of his characters almost off-putting. Pitting the capital-S Serious actor against Ferrell’s manic creation was part of director Jon Favreau’s plan, though it made for a nervous crew. It’s easily one of his best performances in a career in which each seemed to best the last. It went a whole lot further in undoing Sonny Corleone than, say, “Misery.” Anyone with any sort of positive relationship with “Elf” — i.e. most people who have seen it — would be, too. Caan’s character in the 2003 family-friendly holiday comedy “Elf” might not be the first thing that sprung to the minds of most film critics when his death was announced, but it’s certainly the one occupying my mind.

Caan was best known for playing Sonny Corleone in “The Godfather.” But to me, he'll forever be the tragic footballer of “Brian's Song.”

“Brian’s Song” came at the start of a decade of magnificent filmmaking, but it was not a great movie. It was an argument in favor of caring, the case for giving a damn. Here’s a commercial for coffee at Christmas. Here’s a sappy old song on the radio. Caan went on to play Sonny Corleone in arguably the best of those 1970s masterpieces, “The Godfather.” His performance earned an Oscar nomination. It was a statement of intense feeling that neither hid nor apologized for its heart. “Brian’s Song” was a love story to the sound of crashing shoulder pads and trilling whistles, with a haunting theme song that soon filled the radio airwaves. It was a shocking statement to the wartime generation and its sons, boldly naming a feeling we craved despite its fearsome power. Even the Bible pauses for this two-word verse: “Jesus wept.” But there was a damming of the tear ducts among men who knew the love and loss of comrades from Ypres to Iwo Jima to Ia Drang. Sayers was Black. Piccolo was White. Their brief and glorious friendship suggested that healing might be possible, even as Piccolo’s death at 26 warned of its evanescence. The literature of past ages is full of tears of joy, of sorrow, of pride, of wonder. “I love Brian Piccolo,” Sayers declared — in life and in the movie. But we had no words for such a concept because we weren’t in touch with our feelings.

Caan, who died Wednesday at 82, according to a post from his family to his Twitter account, staked out rare ground in Hollywood as a Jew known for blockbuster ...

He also played Barbra Streisand’s love interest in “Funny Lady” (1975), a sequel to the Fanny Brice story in “Funny Girl.” One of his earliest roles, in the 1966 Howard Hawks classic western “El Dorado,” also gave him a longtime cowboy moniker. He played football for two years at Michigan State University, where he was a member of the Jewish Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity.

The Godfather” helped open up a range of roles for the actor that allowed him to play against type and expectation in wonderful ways.

As Caan’s reputation grew (he was a longtime favorite of this paper’s film critics) and a range of roles opened up to him, he played to and against type and expectation, becoming one of the defining faces of New Hollywood. By the time Caan made “The Godfather,” he had established his range in movies as different as Coppola’s directing debut, “The Rain People” (1969), and the 1971 made-for-TV movie “Brian’s Song,” a wildly popular melodrama in which he played the N.F.L. halfback Brian Piccolo, who died young of cancer. With his thick neck and trapezoidal torso, Caan looked like the athlete he plays, but little about the performance in “The Rain People” is obvious. It was Howard Hawks, one of the geniuses of the old studio system, who shortly thereafter set Caan on his way by casting him first in “Red Line 7000” (1965) and then, more important, in “El Dorado,” a western headlined by John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. “I was this little punk working with Wayne and Mitchum,” Caan said later, recalling how, during the shoot, he and Wayne almost got into it on set. And while the film doesn’t end happily — though maybe it does — it ends happily for any viewer who’s open to it, its deep humanity and to Caan’s transcendent performance. Given how aggressively male-dominated so many 1970s classics were, it’s worth remembering that Caan was good with women in more ways than were hinted at in “The Godfather.” It’s an action film with guns and violence, blowtorches and lots of tough guys, but because this is quintessential Michael Mann, it’s also a romance. Caan, who died on Wednesday at 82, has two supreme masterpieces in his filmography: “The Godfather” (1972) and Michael Mann’s “Thief” (1981). We can argue about the sweep of his career, but there’s no debating the greatness that he brought to it. Caan may not be the actor you first think of in relation to “The Godfather,” with its astonishment of legends, but the film is impossible to imagine without his volatile, kinetic performance. “Lady in a Cage” is ridiculous, but it helped set Caan’s career in motion. Following what was then a familiar career trajectory, he started in TV before moving into film, and was soon terrifying Olivia de Havilland in the schlocky 1964 thriller “Lady in a Cage.” Looking at the film now (don’t bother), their roles are almost comically emblematic of the era’s upheavals. I remember racing through the passage (“her legs were wrapped around his thighs”). It’s no wonder that when I saw Francis Ford Coppola’s film, I was more than ready for James Caan.

Everybody's got a favorite James Caan performance. You could fill a pool with the tears spilled over Brian's Song, especially when Brian Piccolo succumbs to ...

Hot off his success writing The Usual Suspects, Christopher McQuarrie wrote and directed this convoluted and ultra-violent but engrossing thriller The Way Of The Gun. Benicio del Toro and Ryan Phillippe play criminals who see a big payday in kidnapping a woman (Juliette Lewis) who’s carrying a baby for an older man (Scott Wilson) and his much younger trophy wife (Kristin Lehman). Hmmm, bad idea. The trio connect with Mr. Henry (Caan), a more established criminal who sees the humor in everything and uses a semi-legit gardening business, Lawn Wranglers, as a front for his operations. Caan breezes through most of the movie looking stylish and oozing charm (especially in his scenes with the effervescent Parker) … until a character shift that Caan can’t sell because it just feels so wrong. It’s more of the same in the sequel, though in the second go-round, Tim teams up to help his son—a transformation that Caan makes us believe for more reasons than the script says so. Mr. Henry is a hero to the boys, and Caan delivers the character’s humor, tough love, and affection in equal measure. Misery runs 107 minutes, and Caan spends most of it confined to a bed, as his character, bestselling author Paul Sheldon, contends with unhinged fan Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates). Bates won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance, and deservedly so, while Caan, who completes and complements her performance, didn’t even receive a Best Actor nomination. Every step of the way, Freebie and Bean are at each other’s throats (literally), wreaking havoc across San Fran in the process, as cars (lots of them) crash, guns are fired, and things go boom. Caan reunited with Francis Coppola for Gardens of Stone, a Vietnam War drama that as a whole ranks as a well-intentioned misfire. Caan was 25 years old when director Howard Hawks tapped him for a supporting role in El Dorado, a Western starring John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. His character, Alan Bourdillon Traherne, better known as Mississippi, is out for vengeance, a quest that catches the attention of Cole Thornton (Wayne) Sheriff Harrah (Mitchum). Thornton takes a liking to Mississippi, and they form a bond, though it’s not quite father-son. Oh, and the film is set deep in the future … 2018. His 137 acting credits date back to 1961, when he guest starred, credited as Jimmy Caan, on the TV shows Naked City and Route 66, and continued to the 2021 release Queen Bees (it includes a couple of upcoming films as well). In Caan’s honor, The A.V. Club takes a look back at 15 of his finest performances, listed in chronological order. He earned—and never lost—his tough-guy reputation as Sonny Corleone in The Godfather. You hated him, but still feared for his Paul Sheldon in Misery. And you just knew he’d come around in time to boost the Santa-meter in Elf. Caan could—and did—do it all in his long and varied career.