Burt Young

The Italian-American Gerald Tommaso DeLouise, artistically known as Burt Young, was born in the New York neighborhood of Queens, in the United States, on April 30, 1940. His father was a modest ice delivery man, and before devoting himself full-time to acting He was a soldier, a boxer and a debt collector, he never had a problem making a living. To train as an actor he did not mess around, he received lessons at the prestigious Lee Strasberg Actor’s Studio , which defined him as “an emotional library”; yes, he started late, at 28 years old, and it started as a game to be close to a girl he liked, despite the fact that he was already a married man then.

With 40 years acting on the small and big screen, his extensive career includes more than a hundred titles. Her film debut came in a not very stimulating horror film, Carnival of Blood (1970). You had to start somewhere, and his next job was of greater interest, it was a drama about drug addiction, Born to Win (1971), starring George Segal . A good example of a certain type of film that he has been in, which shows people from a humble social background in extreme situations. On the other hand, the most striking thing about The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1971) is that a then unknown young man named Robert De Niro was there .

His Latin appearance, dark complexion, robust appearance, and curly hair made him the ideal actor for gangster or underworld films. So he has been seen as a fisherman in Chinatown (Roman Polanksi, 1974), in two Sam Peckinpah titles , The Aristocrats of Crime (1975) and Convoy (1978), in the television series Baretta (1975), and in titles such as Once Upon a Time in America ( Sergio Leone , 1984), Thirst for Power (1984), Mickey Blue Eyes (1999), the television series The Sopranos (2001) and Carlito’s Way. Rise to power (2005).

Of course, his best-known character, and one that gave him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor, is that of Paulie Pennino, brother-in-law of Rocky Balboa ( Sylvester Stallone ) and brother of Adrian ( Talia Shire ) in the Rocky saga , someone human and endearing, with many nuances. Young is the only actor who has been in the six Rocky movies , apart from Stallone himself and the very secondary Tony Burton , from 1976 to 2006, thirty years linked to film boxing. As Young was a boxer – he even boxed in an exhibition match with world champion Muhammad Ali himself–, your opinion on the realism of what Stallone devised is very valuable. According to the actor it was “a fairy tale. But I was so proud of Stallone’s script. (…). He had ‘concrete’ legs. What he wrote wasn’t really a boxing plot, it was a love story, about someone resisting. Not even someone who wins, but someone who resists.” Young has no doubts that in a ring he would beat Stallone, instead he thinks that he could hold his own Jonh Voight, boxer in Champion .

A great professional, he can play small roles in other genres without a problem, whether in political thrillers like Alert: Missiles ( Robert Aldrich , 1977), goofy comedies like Girls with Hooks (also by Robert Aldrich, 1981) and Pluto Nash (2002) or dramas about immigrants… Italians, of course, there’s Waiting for Spring, Bandini (1989). He also worked for Wim Wenders in Land of Plenty (2004).

His ability to adapt to all roles is demonstrated in Win Win, we all win ( Thomas McCarthy , 2011), where he gives life with commendable sobriety to an elderly widower with onset of senile dementia. He in real life is also a widower, and has a daughter, Anne Morea. He has also proven to be multifaceted: he has written scripts and plays, has published a novel entitled “Endings”, has a restaurant in the Bronx, Il Boschetto, and has exhibited his own paintings that can be seen on the internet at the web www.burtyoungartandfilm .com . He assures the actor that Wim Wenders himself has one of his paintings in his office.