James Caan

Born on March 26, 1940 in the dangerous New York neighborhood of the Bronx, where he had to beat himself up to survive, James Edmund Caan belongs to a family of Jews who had to flee from Hitler’s Germany. An athlete from a young age, he played football at Michigan State University before graduating from Neighborhood Playhouse School of Actors, where he was mentored by Sandfor Meisner, who had trained Steve McQueen and Gregory Peck .

After polishing himself in series at large, he made his debut on the big screen as a thug who tries to rob Olivia de Havilland ‘s house while she is locked in the elevator in A Trapped Woman . He came to the fore when he played Mississippi, the boy whose life is saved by John Wayne in El Dorado . During filming he was about to hit the legendary actor, when he discovered that he was cheating at chess. “He was like a 12-year-old boy,” he recalls. Luckily, he managed to stop him Robert Mitchum . Even so, he remembers the protagonist of the film with admiration. “Studios used to create stars, sell personalities, and people would go see them.”

His past as an athlete was decisive for him to be recruited by the most decisive director of his career. Francis Ford Coppola turned him into the famous footballer of It rains on my heart , picked up by a pregnant woman when he hitchhiked. He certainly held his own against some huge Shirley Knight and Robert Duvall , which encouraged the Italian-American filmmaker to later give him – again alongside Duvall – the role of the impulsive Santino, known as “Sonny”, in The Godfather .. The eldest son of the mafia boss Vito Corleone, called to be his successor, gave him an Oscar nomination, deserved for sequences like the one in which he hits his brother-in-law. “The only bad thing is that they pigeonholed me. All casting directors are equally bad. If there weren’t eight people dead on page 11, they wouldn’t send me the script, ”he explained. “They always excused themselves by arguing that I only make mafia movies. I’ve shot two, out of a total of 60!”

He met again with the Corleone ‘consigliere’, Robert Duvall , in The Aristocrats of Crime , where they nailed two CIA hit men. He proved that he could sing and dance, alongside Barbra Streisand , in the musical Funny Lady . After the success of the futurist Rollerball , and two brilliant compositions in A Free and Wild Rider Arrives , by Alan J. Pakula , and Thief , by Michael Mann, James Caan was on his way to becoming a superstar. But he made turbulent headlines by getting involved in dark affairs, and his drug problems escalated. The death of his sister’s cocaine problems plunged the actor into a severe depression. All this separated him from his work between 1982 and 1987.

Only Coppola was able to convince him to return, to play a sergeant who trains young people who are going to go to the Vietnam War, in Gardens of Stone . Unfortunately, the director –also unmotivated, due to the death of his son during filming– did not live up to other occasions. After giving life to a policeman paired with an alien in Alien Nation , and the lawyer who defends Dick Tracy ‘s criminals , he embodied the best character of this second leg of his career in Misery , an adaptation of the Stephen King novel , where he gives life to a best-selling writer held back by an admirer of his novels, a disturbed nurse. His co-star,Kathy Bates , nominated for the Academy Award. “It was a very tough shoot,” the interpreter confessed. “I like to always be on the move and I had to spend all my time in bed, replaying scenes. Also, when we did the one where my character crawls to escape, the cinematographer, Barry Sonnenfeld , spat on the ground and said ‘this is as far as you can go.’ I’ve never had my limits set like this before.”

Divorced in 1966 from Dee Jay Mathis, mother of his first child, the actor has not had much luck in the sentimental field. He was only together for two years with Sheila Ryan , with whom he had his son Scott , who has followed in his footsteps as an actor, for example in the Ocean’s Eleven saga. He has also been a father to Ingrid Hahek, and twice to Linda Stokes, from whom he separated in 2005. A man of character, he has been one of the few to admit that his political ideas are quite different from the usual in his profession. “I’m ultra-conservative in fucking Hollywood,” he declared in an interview. He thinks that during the years of his absence, the movie industry had changed for the worse. “Most studio heads these days don’t know anything about movies, they just understand that if you get Adam Sandler to star, you’re guaranteed to make $150 million.”

He was back in the mob, as the father of Nicole Kidman , in Dogville . Since in recent times they only offered him minor films, in which he parodies himself, such as Elf , Mickey Blue Eyes and Eraser , James Caan took refuge in television, when the series began to become fashionable. He played Ed Deline, a former CIA agent turned casino manager, on the hit series Las Vegas . Since it ended, he has been confined to minor jobs, as the president of Super Agent 86Although it rolls at a good pace, three or four titles a year, almost always lousy, with limited distribution. Keep blaming those above. “Of all the producers today I respect very few. For example Harvey Weinstein ”, he commented before he fell into disgrace. “The guy makes films. That is his business. He is not dedicated to going to stupid shareholders meetings to talk about how many asses he is going to sit in the seats ”. Of course, he did not mince words.