March 26: Happy Birthday James Caan

[TMC]

https://lebeauleblog.com/2018/03/26/...leonard-nimoy/

James Caan turns 78 today. He attended Michigan State and Hofstra before graduating from the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York. During his studies, he made a number of guest appearances on TV. His first major film role was in Lady in a Cage in 1964, following which Howard Hawks cast him in prominent roles in Red Line 7000 and El Dorado; he also received a Golden Globe nomination for The Glory Guys. At the beginning of the seventies he was cast as Rabbit Angstrom in an adaptation of John Updike’s Rabbit, Run, and then was nominated for an Emmy for starring in the TV movie Brian’s Song as Brian Piccolo. One of his most famous roles came as Santino “Sonny” Corleone in The Godfather, for which he received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actor.


Caan remained around the fringes of the A-list, at least, for the rest of the seventies and the start of the eighties. He was a Golden Globe nominee for The Gambler and Funny Lady, and starred in films like The Killer Elite, Comes a Horseman, and Michael Mann’s Thief. After taking a few years off in the mid-eighties, due to depression and burnout, he returned to star in Francis Ford Coppola’s Gardens of Stone and to give one of his best performances opposite Kathy Bates in Misery. He has continued to work steadily up to the present; he played the title role in last year’s Undercover Grandpa.