{"id":1765,"date":"2022-07-07T18:34:41","date_gmt":"2022-07-07T18:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/?p=1765"},"modified":"2022-07-07T18:34:41","modified_gmt":"2022-07-07T18:34:41","slug":"remembering-james-caan-iconic-the-godfather-actor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/2022\/07\/remembering-james-caan-iconic-the-godfather-actor.html","title":{"rendered":"Remembering James Caan, Iconic &#8220;The Godfather&#8221; Actor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>James Caan, the American actor renowned for his role as Sonny Corleone in the mafia epic\u00a0<em>The Godfather<\/em> and a string of key films in the 1970s, has died aged 82.<\/p>\n<p>His Twitter account released the news on Thursday. A statement\u00a0read, \u201cIt is with great sadness that we inform you of the passing of Jimmy on the evening of July 6. The family appreciates the outpouring of love and heartfelt condolences and asks that you continue to respect their privacy during this difficult time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Notorious for a hell-raising party lifestyle, Caan cut a swathe through Hollywood in the 1970s and early 80s, before abruptly quitting acting and for what\u00a0the actor described\u00a0as a \u201cpretty scary period.\u201d He disappeared from public view before engineering a comeback in the late 1980s, winning acclaim for films such as<em> Misery<\/em>, <em>The Yards<\/em>, and <em>Elf<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Caan was born in 1940 in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Jewish immigrants. His father worked as a kosher butcher. Eager not to follow his father into the meat trade, Caan initially aimed for a career as a football player but got interested in acting after studying at Hofstra University in New York state \u2013 where he met future collaborator Francis Ford Coppola.<\/p>\n<p>Caan then joined the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre; his first significant acting credit was a small role in the 1961 Broadway production of <em>Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole<\/em>, a second world war play by William Goldman and his brother James.<\/p>\n<p>After a string of minor film and TV appearances, Caan achieved leading man status in 1965 in Howard Hawks\u2019 stock car racing drama <em>Red Line 7000<\/em>, following it up with a role alongside John Wayne and Robert Mitchum in Hawks\u2019 1966 western El Dorado.<\/p>\n<p>Caan was cast by a then-little-regarded Robert Altman in the 1967 space film <em>Countdown<\/em>. Still, his first significant association with the Hollywood new wave came with the 1969 film <em>The Rain People<\/em>, directed by Coppola, in which Caan played a hitchhiking former college football star who Shirley Knight\u2019s dissatisfied middle-class housewife picks up.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fNMtHosai08\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>After playing the lead in a disappointing 1970 adaptation of John Updike\u2019s celebrated novel <em>Rabbit, Run<\/em>, Caan achieved a breakthrough with Coppola\u2019s <em>The Godfather<\/em>. Caan originally auditioned for the role of Michael Corleone, which eventually went to Al Pacino and was favored by the studio executives.<\/p>\n<p>Still, after Coppola insisted on Pacino, Caan was given another plum role, Corleone\u2019s older brother Sonny. Caan received his only Oscar nomination, for best supporting actor, for the film, and his work remains notable for Sonny\u2019s gruesome death scene, for which\u00a0Caan said he was fitted with over 140 \u201csquibs,\u201d or explosive blood pellets, to simulate gunshot wounds.<\/p>\n<p>Caan also had a role in the successful animation <em>Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs<\/em> and in the fondly-remembered Christmas comedy <em>Elf<\/em> as Will Ferrell\u2019s businessman father. In 2018 he appeared in Carol Morley\u2019s Martin Amis adaptation <em>Out of Blue<\/em> as the father of murder victim Jennifer Rockwell.<\/p>\n<p>Caan was married four times between 1961 and 1966 to Dee Jay Mathis, Sheila Marie Ryan from 1975-76, Ingrid Hajek from 1990-94, and Linda Stokes from 1995 to 2017. He had five children, one of whom, Scott, followed him into acting, appearing in <em>Gone in 60 Seconds, Ocean\u2019s Eleven<\/em>, and the <em>Hawaii Five-0<\/em> reboot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Caan, the American actor renowned for his role as Sonny Corleone in the mafia epic\u00a0The Godfather and a string of key films in the 1970s, has died aged 82. His Twitter account released the news on Thursday. A statement\u00a0read, \u201cIt is with great sadness that we inform you of the passing of Jimmy on&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":1771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[127,122],"tags":[586,589],"class_list":["post-1765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actor","category-entertainment","tag-james-caan","tag-the-godfather"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Remembering James Caan, Iconic &quot;The Godfather&quot; Actor<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"James Caan, the actor best known for his roles in &quot;Misery,&quot; &quot;The Godfather,&quot; and &quot;Elf&quot; has died at the age of 82.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/2022\/07\/remembering-james-caan-iconic-the-godfather-actor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Remembering James Caan, Iconic &quot;The Godfather&quot; Actor\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"James Caan, the actor best known for his roles in &quot;Misery,&quot; &quot;The Godfather,&quot; and &quot;Elf&quot; has died at the age of 82.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/2022\/07\/remembering-james-caan-iconic-the-godfather-actor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Where Hope Lives\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-07-07T18:34:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/399\/2022\/07\/James-Caan-02_credit-s_bukley-Shutterstock-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"768\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"576\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lauren McKeithen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Remembering James Caan, Iconic \"The Godfather\" Actor","description":"James Caan, the actor best known for his roles in \"Misery,\" \"The Godfather,\" and \"Elf\" has died at the age of 82.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/2022\/07\/remembering-james-caan-iconic-the-godfather-actor.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Remembering James Caan, Iconic \"The Godfather\" Actor","og_description":"James Caan, the actor best known for his roles in \"Misery,\" \"The Godfather,\" and \"Elf\" has died at the age of 82.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/2022\/07\/remembering-james-caan-iconic-the-godfather-actor.html","og_site_name":"Where Hope Lives","article_published_time":"2022-07-07T18:34:41+00:00","og_image":[{"width":768,"height":576,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/399\/2022\/07\/James-Caan-02_credit-s_bukley-Shutterstock-scaled.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Lauren McKeithen","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/2022\/07\/remembering-james-caan-iconic-the-godfather-actor.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/2022\/07\/remembering-james-caan-iconic-the-godfather-actor.html","name":"Remembering James Caan, Iconic \"The Godfather\" Actor","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/2022\/07\/remembering-james-caan-iconic-the-godfather-actor.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/2022\/07\/remembering-james-caan-iconic-the-godfather-actor.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/399\/2022\/07\/James-Caan-02_credit-s_bukley-Shutterstock-scaled.jpg","datePublished":"2022-07-07T18:34:41+00:00","dateModified":"2022-07-07T18:34:41+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/#\/schema\/person\/67183b7ec4ffc995620174c78f9cc68a"},"description":"James Caan, the actor best known for his roles in \"Misery,\" \"The Godfather,\" and \"Elf\" has died at the age of 82.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/2022\/07\/remembering-james-caan-iconic-the-godfather-actor.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/2022\/07\/remembering-james-caan-iconic-the-godfather-actor.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/2022\/07\/remembering-james-caan-iconic-the-godfather-actor.html#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/399\/2022\/07\/James-Caan-02_credit-s_bukley-Shutterstock-scaled.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/399\/2022\/07\/James-Caan-02_credit-s_bukley-Shutterstock-scaled.jpg","width":768,"height":576,"caption":"S. 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