Danny Aiello
1933 - 2019
I always like to say that Leading Men and Leading Ladies and Big Movie Stars may be what drives box office and makes people go to the movies, but Hollywood just can't make movies without all of the great character actors that comprise most of the roles that you see on screen. Such an actor was Danny Aiello who died earlier this week at the age of 86.
IMDB shows 105 acting credits for Aiello right up through 2019. Amazingly, he didn't get his first credit until 1973, when he was forty years old! If you peruse his credits, you will see that many of his roles were portrayals of mobsters, but not all of them. He was certainly well versed, and among the notable credits are....
- His very first credit was in 1973's "Bang the Drum Slowly", a baseball movie that also featured a young and relatively unknown actor named Robert De Niro.
- A part in "Godfather Part II" in 1974.
- He played Madonna's father in her 1986 music video for "Papa Don't Preach".
- He was a reluctant hit man who just couldn't do away with Mia Farrow in Woody Allen's 1986 "Radio Days." He also appeared in Allen's "The Purple Rose of Cairo" in 1985.
- A part the romantic comedy "Moonstruck" (1987), a movie that won an Oscar for Cher.
- He was the owner of the pizza joint that became the center of an urban riot in Spike Lee's "Do the Right thing" (1985), and he was nominated for an Oscar for that role.
And, like I said, there are 98 other performances of note on the his remarkable and varied resume.
RIP Danny Aiello.
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