Celebrity Biographies
Carmine Cardi
The Hollywood Academy (AMPAS) has only expelled four people throughout history. Long before the agency fired Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and Roman Polanski, Carmine Caridi, a supporting actor whose resume highlights brief stints in “The Godfather 2” and “The Godfather 3,” was invited to leave. The 85-year-old interpreter died on May 29, 2019, after several days in a coma at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, as confirmed by his friend Chazz Palminteri, a famous actor and filmmaker, also Italian-American.
Born January 23, 1934, New Yorker Carmine Caridi served in the Army during the Korean War. Upon returning to his country, he managed to make his way as a supporting actor, almost always without dialogue, or with a few sentences. He was involved in titles such as Almost, almost a mafia , Crazy Joe and The Player .
Francis Ford Coppola was very impressed by his audition for The Godfather , so he decided to have him play Sonny Corleone, the eldest son of the central character. However, producer Robert Evans argued that he was too tall for the part, so James Caan was ultimately cast . Carmine was given the small role of Carmine Rosato, a violent criminal who ran drug deals with his brother Tony’s in the sequel. In The Godfather III he played a different character, Albert Volpe, a guy who invests in Michael Corleone’s casinos. He also appeared in titles such as Los suegros , or El gran despilfarro , although his moment of greatest popularity came with the seriesFame , where he usually played Bruno’s father, one of the protagonists. He never retired, to the point that shortly before his death he had appeared in a chapter of the sitcom Larry David .
In 2004, the Academy accused him of leaking DVD copies of When You Least Expected It and other Oscar-competing films online. The FBI launched an investigation, and ultimately, Caridi became the first AMPAS expelled of all time. “I lent them to a friend to do him a favor, and he has gotten me into trouble,” he said in an interview. No information is known about his personal life.