The RIP Famous Person Thread

[harrybarracuda]

some great tunes, formed my childhood earliest music memories - RIP

That's not true, he didn't do anything on wax cylinder.

[harrybarracuda]

A great songwriter/ composer who vocally was totally tone death. Could not sing a note on key.

Granted he didn't have much of a voice, but that's stretching it a bit.

[harrybarracuda]

Hugh Hudson, a British filmmaker who debuted as a feature director with the Oscar-winning Olympics drama “Chariots of Fire” and later made such well-regarded movies as “My Life So Far” and the Oscar-nominated “Greystroke,” has died at age 86.



Hudson’s family issued a brief statement announcing that he died Friday at a hospital in London “after a short illness.”
A London native, Hudson started out as a documentary editor and producer and also worked in television advertising at a time when commercials were emerging as an artform in the U.K. as he was part of a wave of British directors leading the way, including Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Alan Parker and Adrian Lyne. Hudson went on to find work in feature films in the late 1970s as a second-unit director on Alan Parker’s “Midnight Express.” In 1981, producer David Puttnam asked Hudson to direct “Chariots of Fire,” which starred Ben Cross and Nigel Havers as British athletes of contrasting religions and backgrounds at the 1924 Olympics.
With its inspirational plot and sentimental theme music by the Greek composer Vangelis, “Chariots of Fire” was a solid commercial success and won four Academy Awards, including best picture and score. Hudson, a nominee for director, later helped produce a stage adaptation of “Chariots” that was timed for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
He had mixed success with future movie projects. “Greystroke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes,” a 1984 movie featuring Ralph Richardson in his final movie role, was a box office success that received three Oscar nominations. But two years later, Hudson was a nominee for a Golden Raspberry for directing the critical and commercial flop “Revolution.” His other credits included “My Life So Far,” “Lost Angels” and “Altamira.” He also co-wrote “Tiger’s Nest,” a 2022 release.
According to his family’s statement, Hudson is survived by his wife, Maryam, his son, Thomas, and his first wife, Sue.

Hugh Hudson, "Chariots of Fire" Director and A Noted Ad Filmmaker, Dies At 86 | SHOOTonline

[Bob Mason]

Dennis Lotis has died at the age of 97. Thought he must have died years ago. New, so don't know how to post pics and stuff.

[malmomike77]

Raquel Welch: US actress and model dead at 82

Hollywood star Raquel Welch, who became an international sex symbol in the 1960s, has died aged 82.


Welch died on Wednesday morning after a brief illness, according to her manager.


She won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in 1974's The Three Musketeers and was nominated again in 1987 for the film Right to Die.


The American is often credited with breaking the mould for modern day action heroines in Hollywood films.


She rose to fame with back-to-back roles in the 1966 films Fantastic Voyage and One Million Years BC.


Welch only had a few lines in the latter, but promotional stills of her wearing a skimpy two-piece deer-skin bikini turned her into a leading pin-up girl of the era.


Welch addressed her image in her book, Raquel: Beyond the cleavage, in which she opened up about her childhood, her early career woes as a single mother in Hollywood, and why she would never lie about her age.

Raquel Welch: US actress and model dead at 82 - BBC News

[beachbound]

^ The world is a little less beautiful today. RIP Ms. Welch.

[harrybarracuda]

Will live on forever in pub quizzes...

[harrybarracuda]

Stella Stevens, star of ‘The Nutty Professor,’ dies at 84



Stella Stevens, a prominent leading lady in 1960s and 70s comedies perhaps best known for playing the object of Jerry Lewis’s affection in “The Nutty Professor,” has died. She was 84.
Stevens’ estate said she died Friday in Los Angeles after a long illness.

Born Estelle Caro Eggleston in Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1938, she married at 16 and gave birth to her first and only child, actor/producer Andrew Stevens in 1955 when she was 17, and divorced two years later. She started acting and modeling during her time at Memphis State University and made her film debut in a minor role in the Bing Crosby musical “Say One for Me” in 1959, but she considered “Li’l Abner” her big break.
“The head of publicity at Paramount basically made me a worldwide sex symbol,” Stevens told FilmTalk in 2017. “He had me doing a lot of layouts with photographers — indoors, outdoors, here and there — being seen in different places, going to the best restaurants, meeting with wonderful actors and directors … those were the golden years of Hollywood. It was a very exciting time.”
Soon after, she won the New Star Golden Globe, was named Playboy’s Playmate of the Month and got a contract with Paramount Pictures, leading to film work and “Girls! Girls! Girls!” with Elvis Presley, which she only agreed to do because she was promised to a Montgomery Clift movie if she did it. It was a miserable six days of filming, she said, due to the temper of director Norman Taurog, though she said Presley was nice. The Clift picture didn’t pan out either, at least with her promised co-star. It turned into John Cassavetes’ “Too Late Blues,” with Bobby Darrin.
“Bobby was a very fine actor, but as you can imagine, he was no Montgomery Clift,” she said.
Next came “The Nutty Professor” as Lewis’ student, Stella Purdy, who he is infatuated with.
“Jerry Lewis had told the bosses at Paramount he wanted to cast the most beautiful ingénue working at the studio — or something like that — and so I got the gig,” she said. “We all tried to make the characters he had created in the script special, wonderful, unique — and if you ask me, I do believe that’s why the film still holds up after all those years.”
At Columbia Pictures, she’d appear in “The Secret of My Success,” “The Silencers,” with Dean Martin, and “Where Angels Go Trouble Follows,” as a nun opposite Rosalind Russell. Other notable roles include “Slaughter,” with Jim Brown, the Sam Peckinpah television film “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” and “The Poseidon Adventure” in which she played Linda Rogo, Ernest Borgnine’s character’s wife.
Stevens worked steadily in television in the 1970s and 80s, appearing in the pilots for “Wonder Woman,” “Hart to Hart” and “The Love Boat” and in series like “Night Court,” “Murder She Wrote” and “Magnum, P.I.”
Stella Stevens, 'The Nutty Professor' actress dies at 84 - Washington Times

[harrybarracuda]

Richard Belzer death: Law & Order SVU star and comedian dies aged 78



Richard Belzer, the longtime star of NBC’s Law & Order franchise has died at the age of 78, according to his friends and former colleagues.
Belzer died at his home in Bozouls in southwest France on Sunday, writer Bill Scheft, a friend of the actor and veteran comedian, told The Hollywood Reporter.

https://static.independent.co.uk/202...=982:726,smart

[harrybarracuda]

Former World Of Sport presenter Dickie Davies dies aged 94



Former World Of Sport presenter Dickie Davies has died at the age of 94.

Davies is best known for fronting the ITV show between 1968 and its end in 1985.

Former World Of Sport presenter Dickie Davies dies aged 94 | UK News | Sky News

[DrWilly]

He’s not famous at all.

[peaches]

He’s not famous at all.

. He wasn’t famous ( past tense )

And he must have been famous……………. cause I knew who he was ��

[DrWilly]

Hans Poulsen's music was often on the radio in Australia for many years and much loved by millions.

Before TV was invented?

[malmomike77]

Mottie is dead.......

John Motson, legendary football commentator, dies aged 77 | Football | The Guardian

[misskit]

Who is that?

[malmomike77]

^ The voice of football commentary in the UK.

[Troy]

^ I remember when he first took over football commentary from David Coleman. A bit of youngster with a poofy sheepskin coat was the initial reaction by many. However, he really knew his stuff and it didn't take long before he was accepted in the position.

Never really thought of him growing old, had such a great youngster's enthusiasm for the game.

Shit! Makes me feel really old now!

[malmomike77]

However, he really knew his stuff and it didn't take long before he was accepted in the position.

indeed, he also brought his own style to the job. These days ( i mean certainly the last 10-15 years) there's no personality or originality.

Shit! Makes me feel really old now!

yep, my childhood memories or contemporaries are all slowly disappearing

[harrybarracuda]

He was an early target of the woke brigade when he made the innocuous comment that it was hard for commentators to tell some black players apart under floodlights because the light did not pick out their features as much as caucasian players.

The Grauniad did a scathing piece on his supposed "racism" illustrated with comments from two rent-a-quote former black players, along with their pictures.

Under which they put the wrong names.

[harrybarracuda]

‘Some Like It Hot’ producer Walter Mirisch dies aged 101



LOS ANGELES, Feb 27 — Oscar-winner Walter Mirisch, who produced Hollywood classics such as West Side Story, Some Like It Hot and The Pink Panther, has died at age 101 of natural causes, the Academy said yesterday.Mirisch, whose career spanned six decades and who was also a former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, died on Friday in Los Angeles, the organisation said in a statement.


The Academy was “deeply saddened to hear of Walter’s passing,” said chief executive Bill Kramer and president Janet Yang in the statement, hailing him as a “true visionary.”
“He had a powerful impact on the film community and the Academy... His passion for filmmaking and the Academy never wavered, and he remained a dear friend and advisor,” they added.


Mirisch, who was born in New York City on November 8, 1921, was honoured by the Academy three times: with a Best Picture Oscar for 1967’s In the Heat of the Night, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for his “consistently high quality of motion picture production,” and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.


The Academy called him “one of the most prolific producers in Hollywood history.”
The Mirisch Company, formed in 1957 with his brothers Harold and Marvin, produced enduring classics including Some Like It Hot (1959), The Magnificent Seven (1960), West Side Story (1961), The Great Escape (1963), The Pink Panther (1963) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).
His wife Patricia passed away in 2005, and he is survived by his three children, one grandchild, and two great-grandsons. — AFP


https://www.malaymail.com/news/showbiz/2023/02/27/some-like-it-hot-producer-walter-mirisch-dies-aged-101/56935

[harrybarracuda]

Linda Kasabian, Charles Manson follower who helped send him to prison, dies at 73




In 1969, 20-year-old Linda Kasabian came to California to find God. Instead, she found Charles Manson.

Just weeks after joining his ragtag “family” of lost and damaged souls, Kasabian was entwined in the brutal bloodbath that became known around the world as the Tate-LaBianca murders. Actress Sharon Tate and six others were killed under orders from Manson during a two-night rampage that would terrify Los Angeles and bring the 1960s to an abrupt and grisly end.

Kasabian, who went on to serve as the chief prosecution witness in the sensational 1970 trial that sent Manson and three followers to prison for life, died Jan. 21 at a hospital in Tacoma, Wash., the Washington Post reported. The Post obtained a copy of her death certificate, which identified her as Linda Chiochios, one of various names she used after the Manson trials. No cause was listed. She was 73.

Like many of the era’s youthful seekers, Kasabian drifted around the country taking drugs, living in communes and practicing free love. In the summer of 1969, she went to Los Angeles to reconcile with her husband, Bob Kasabian, who was staying at a friend’s trailer in Topanga Canyon, but he wound up leaving her.

Stranded with her 1-year-old daughter, Tanya, and pregnant with her second child, she was excited when a new acquaintance, Catherine “Gypsy” Share, invited her to Spahn Ranch, a sprawling, remote property in the San Fernando Valley where “this beautiful man named Charlie” had established a commune. She jumped at the chance to join it.

“I was like a little blind girl in the forest,” Kasabian said in her testimony at the 1970 trial, “and I took the first path that came to me.”

That path quickly led to mayhem.

On her first night at the ranch, she slept with Charles “Tex” Watson, a high-ranking member of the Manson clan. He talked Kasabian into stealing $5,000 from her husband’s friend in Topanga, justifying the crime by telling her “that she could do no wrong and that everything should be shared,” Vincent Bugliosi, the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who led the prosecution of the Manson killers, wrote in his bestselling book about the case, “Helter Skelter.”

Kasabian returned to Topanga the next day and absconded with the money, which she turned over to the clan along with most of her belongings.

She went on to have sex with the other men in the commune, but it was Manson whom she fell in love with. She was in thrall to the scrawny, scraggly-haired ex-con, who threw LSD orgies, was paranoid about Blacks and warned of a coming race war that he called “Helter Skelter.” Kasabian testified that she believed he was the Messiah and learned to obey him.

“The girls,” she said, referring to Manson’s other women, “used to tell me never to question Charlie. That what Charlie said was right.”

So she acquiesced to his child-rearing philosophy that gave children “complete freedom” from their parents. “They wanted me to stay away from Tanya. They were killing her ego,” she testified. She said she only dared to care for and feed her daughter when Manson was not around.

She also participated in his “creepy-crawly” raids, which entailed breaking into mansions in Beverly Hills and Bel-Air while the residents were asleep, then rearranging and pilfering their possessions.

When Manson summoned Kasabian on the afternoon of Aug. 8, 1969, she thought he wanted to send her on another nighttime thieving mission. This time, however, he instructed her to grab a knife, a change of clothes and her driver’s license. “Go with Tex, and do whatever Tex tells you to do,” he said, according to Bugliosi’s account.

She drove with Watkins, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel to the secluded Benedict Canyon estate where Tate lived with her husband, director Roman Polanski, who was out of the country filming. Once the Manson crew arrived on Cielo Drive, the nightmare began.

Kasabian testified that she saw Watkins shoot into a car that was coming down the driveway and kill the driver, Steven Parent, 18, a friend of the property’s caretaker. She remained outside as the lookout while the others entered the house and within a few minutes heard the “horrifying sounds” of Tate and her houseguests pleading for their lives.

When Atkins, who went by the nickname Sadie, emerged from the house, Kasabian begged her to stop the bloodshed. “I just looked at her and I said, ‘Sadie, please make it stop.’ And she said, ‘I can’t, it’s too late,’” she recounted in a 2009 interview with radio host Larry King.

She saw Watson chase a bleeding man — Polanski friend Voytek Frykowski, 32 — into the bushes and knife him repeatedly. She saw Krenwinkel with an upraised knife pursue a woman in a white gown — Frykowski’s girlfriend, Abigail Folger, 25 — across the lawn.

Inside, stabbed and hanged, was Tate, 26, who was 8 months pregnant. The fifth victim was Hollywood hairstylist Jay Sebring, 35.

Kasabian went back to the car and waited. “My thoughts went to going to get help. I didn’t do it because I was afraid they would kill me and they would kill my daughter,” she said in the 2009 History Channel documentary “Manson.”

The next night, Manson joined the deadly foray to the Los Feliz home of grocer Leno LaBianca, 42, and his wife, Rosemary, 38. Manson tied up the couple, then ordered Watkins, Atkins, Krenwinkel and a fourth clan member, Leslie Van Houten, into the house. They stabbed the LaBiancas, then used the couple’s blood to scrawl the phrases “Death to Pigs” and “Rise” on the walls. While the slaughter unfolded, Manson returned to the car where Kasabian was waiting.

After leaving the LaBianca house, Manson ordered Kasabian and another follower, Steven “Clem” Grogan, to kill an actor friend who lived in Venice, but Kasabian thwarted the plan by deliberately knocking on the wrong door. “I just wasn’t going to kill somebody. If Charlie wanted to kill me, then he was going to kill me,” she said in the “Manson” film.

Two days later Manson told Kasabian to visit Bobby Beausoleil, the clan member who had been arrested a few days earlier for killing Manson associate Gary Hinman at Manson’s direction. She seized the opportunity to escape, leaving her daughter Tanya behind because the child had been taken to a remote location with other Manson family children. She returned for her a few months later, after the ranch was raided and Tanya was placed in foster care.

Kasabian hitchhiked across the country, ending up at her mother’s home in New Hampshire. When she learned she was wanted on a fugitive warrant, she surrendered to local authorities.

In Los Angeles, she was charged with seven counts of murder but was given immunity from prosecution after she testified against Manson and the others.

Born Linda Drouin in Maine on June 21, 1949, she grew up in Milford, N.H., in an unstable home and left when she was 16. After dropping out of high school, she married, divorced and married again, and drifted from commune to commune, practicing free love and dropping acid. She became a mother at 19.

“She described all this with a candor that at times shocked me,” Bugliosi wrote, “yet which, I knew, would be a plus on the witness stand. ... I knew that if Linda testified truthfully about those two nights of murder, it would be immaterial whether she had been promiscuous, taken dope, stolen.”

During her 18 days on the witness stand, she held firm against attacks by the defense team and Manson, whose attempts at intimidation included making throat-slashing gestures at her.

Although the jury foreman discounted the importance of Kasabian’s testimony after guilty verdicts were handed down for Manson, Krenwinkel, Atkins and Van Houten, Bugliosi had a different view. “I doubt we would have convicted Manson without her,” he told The Observer in 2009.

She also was a prosecution witness at Watson’s trial. Like the others, he was convicted and sentenced to death, which changed to life in prison after the California Supreme Court briefly ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972. Atkins and Manson died behind bars, in 2009 and 2017, respectively.

After the trials Kasabian went into hiding and changed her name but could not completely elude public notice.

She is often mentioned in connection with writer Joan Didion’s classic 1979 essay “The White Album,” in which Didion tells of buying a dress for Kasabian to wear on her first day on the stand. Two decades later, a British rock band, inspired by the former Manson follower’s notoriety, named itself after her. And the 2019 Quentin Tarantino movie “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood,” which takes place the year of the murders, includes a character based on Kasabian called Flower Child.

Kasabian lived in New Hampshire and later in Washington state, where she had run-ins with the law for drug possession. She raised four children, including a son who was born while she was in prison awaiting the start of the Manson trial.

She said she thought about the murders every day.

“I could never accept the fact that I was not punished for my involvement in this tragedy,” she said in the 2009 film. “I felt then what I feel now, always and forever, that it was a waste of life that had no reason, no rhyme. It was wrong. And it hurt a lot of people.”

Linda Kasabian, Charles Manson follower who helped send him to prison, dies at 73 - Los Angeles Times

[tomcat]

Shit! Makes me feel really old now!

...but not, I presume, poofy...

[Happy As Larry]

Wayne Shorter, sage of the saxophone, dies at 89

Wayne Shorter, the 12-time Grammy-winning saxophonist and composer and the creator of one of the singular sounds in contemporary jazz over more than half a century, died on Thursday, March 2 in Los Angeles. Shorter was 89 years old.
Cem Kurosman, a publicist at Blue Note Records, which released Shorter's recent recordings, confirmed his death in an email to NPR.

Wayne Shorter, sage of the saxophone, dies at 89 : NPR

[harrybarracuda]

Wayne Shorter, enigmatic saxophonist who shaped modern jazz, dies at 89



Wayne Shorter, the enigmatic, intrepid saxophonist who shaped modern jazz as one of its most admired composers, died Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 89.

His publicist, Alisse Kingsley, confirmed his death, at a hospital. There was no immediate information on the cause.

Shorter’s career reached across more than half a century, largely inextricable from jazz’s complex evolution during that span. He emerged in the 1960s as a tenor saxophonist and in-house composer for pacesetting editions of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and the Miles Davis Quintet, two of the most celebrated small groups in jazz history.

He then helped pioneer fusion, with Davis and as a leader of Weather Report. He also forged a bond with popular music in marquee collaborations with singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, guitarist Carlos Santana and the band Steely Dan.

Shorter wrote his share of compositions that became jazz standards, such as Footprints, a coolly ethereal waltz, and Black Nile, a driving anthem.

His recorded output as a leader, especially during a feverishly productive stretch on Blue Note Records in the mid-1960s – when he made Night Dreamer, JuJu, Speak No Evil and several others, all post-bop classics – compares favourably to the best winning streaks in jazz.

Since the turn of the 21st century, the Wayne Shorter Quartet – by far Shorter’s longest-running band, and the one most garlanded with acclaim – set an imposing standard for formal elasticity and cohesive volatility, bringing avant-garde practice into the heart of the jazz mainstream.

Wayne Shorter was born in Newark, New Jersey, on August 25th, 1933. His father, Joseph, worked as a welder for the Singer sewing machine company, and his mother, Louise, sewed for a furrier.

Wayne and his older brother, Alan, a trumpeter, joined a local bebop group led by a flashy singer named Jackie Bland.

Shorter earned a degree in music education at New York University. After serving two years in the Army, he re-entered the scene as a member of Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.

Shorter joined the second Miles Davis Quintet in 1964, with pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams.

Most of Shorter’s output on Blue Note unfolded while he was working with Davis. Speak No Evil, recorded in 1964, featured his wife, Teruko Nakagami, known as Irene, on the cover, and contained a song (Infant Eyes) dedicated to their daughter, Miyako. The marriage ended in divorce in 1966.

Together with Austrian keyboardist and composer Josef Zawinul and Czech bassist Miroslav Vitous, Shorter formed Weather Report, which released its debut album, called Weather Report, in 1971. Weather Report’s most commercially successful edition, featuring electric bass phenom Jaco Pastorius, became an arena attraction, and one of its albums, Heavy Weather, was certified gold (and later platinum).

While in Weather Report, Shorter made precious few solo albums – but Native Dancer, a 1974 collaboration with Brazilian troubadour Milton Nascimento, inspired more than one generation of admirers, notably guitarist and composer Pat Metheny and bassist and vocalist Esperanza Spalding.

The idea of working with Nascimento had come from Shorter’s second wife, Ana Maria (Patricio) Shorter.

Iska, Shorter’s daughter with Ana Maria, died of a grand mal seizure in 1985 at age 14. Then, in 1996, Ana Maria and the Shorters’ niece Dalila Lucien were among the 230 people killed when TWA Flight 800 crashed shortly after take-off from Kennedy International Airport in New York.

In 1999 he married Carolina Dos Santos, a Brazilian dancer and actor. His wife is among his survivors, who also include Miyako Shorter; another daughter, Mariana; and a grandson. Alan Shorter died in 1987.

Shorter won 12 Grammy Awards, the last bestowed this year for best improvised jazz solo, for Endangered Species, a track written with Spalding.

He also received a lifetime achievement honour from the Recording Academy in 2015. He was a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow and a 1998 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. He received the Polar Music Prize, an international honour recognising both pop and classical music, in 2017. And he was among the recipients of the 2018 Kennedy Center Honors.

Wayne Shorter, enigmatic saxophonist who shaped modern jazz, dies at 89 – The Irish Times

[harrybarracuda]

Tom Sizemore, ‘Saving Private Ryan’ Actor, Dies at 61



Tom Sizemore has died after being taken off life support, his manager Charles Lago confirmed to Variety on Friday. The 61-year-old actor suffered a brain aneurysm on Feb. 18.

“It is with great sadness and sorrow I have to announce that actor Thomas Edward Sizemore (‘Tom Sizemore’) aged 61 passed away peacefully in his sleep today at St Joseph’s Hospital Burbank,” Lago said in a statement. “His brother Paul and twin boys Jayden and Jagger (17) were at his side.”

Lago had previously said on Feb. 27 that “doctors informed his family that there is no further hope and have recommended end of life decision.”

On Feb. 18, Sizemore collapsed in his Los Angeles home and was transported to the hospital by paramedics. There, doctors determined that he had suffered a brain aneurysm as the result of a stroke. Sizemore had remained in critical condition since then and had been in a coma under intensive care.

“I am deeply saddened by the loss of my big brother Tom,” his brother Paul Sizemore said in a statement. “He was larger than life. He has influenced my life more than anyone I know. He was talented, loving, giving and could keep you entertained endlessly with his wit and storytelling ability. I am devastated he is gone and will miss him always.”

Born in Detroit on Nov. 29, 1961, Sizemore moved to New York City to pursue acting in the ’80s. One of his first credits came in 1989 with an appearance in Oliver Stone’s best picture nominee “Born on the Fourth of July.”

Known for playing the tough guy, he rose to fame in the 1990s with films like “Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man,” “Passenger 57,” “True Romance” and “Natural Born Killers.” He got his big break in Steven Spielberg’s 1998 war film “Saving Private Ryan,” in which he played Technical Sergeant Mike Horvath. “Saving Private Ryan” went on to score a best picture nomination at the Academy Awards. Along with his co-stars, among them Tom Hanks and Matt Damon, Sizemore received a Screen Actors Guild nomination for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture. Over the course of his career, Sizemore has worked with directors including Michael Mann, Martin Scorsese, Peter Hyams, Carl Franklin, Oliver Stone, Ridley Scott and Michael Bay.

Sizemore was also a convicted abuser. In 2003, he was convicted of domestic violence against his girlfriend at the time, and in 2017, Sizemore pled no contest to two charges of domestic violence after being arrested a few months earlier on suspicion of assaulting his partner.

In 2005, Sizemore was sentenced to several months in jail after being caught attempting to fake a urine test. In 2007, he was arrested for possession of methamphetamine, and in 2019, he was arrested for possession of “various illegal narcotics.”

Sizemore has been public about his struggles with substance abuse, appearing on “Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew” and “Dr. Phil” to discuss his legal troubles.

In 1998, the actor shared that his “Heat” and “Witness to the Mob” co-star, Robert De Niro, personally assisted in helping Sizemore enter a drug rehabilitation program. In 2013, the actor released a memoir detailing his career and personal battle with addiction, titled “By Some Miracle I Made It Out of There.”

Sizemore is survived by his two children, Jagger and Jayden. There will be a private cremation service for Sizemore’s family, with a larger celebration of life event planned in a few weeks.

Tom Sizemore Dead: 'Saving Private Ryan' Actor Was 61 - Variety