James Caan

James Edmund Caan broke through in the late sixties with work for Hawks, Altman, and Coppola, then earned an Emmy nomination playing doomed running back Brian Piccolo in the 1971 TV movie Brian's Song. The Godfather arrived in 1972 and brought him an Oscar nomination and a star on the Walk of Fame six years later. He followed with a string of leads - The Gambler, Funny Lady, Rollerball, A Bridge Too Far, Thief - that kept him in the center of seventies American cinema. He stepped away for five years, then returned in 1987 and worked steadily through the next two decades: Misery, where he played the writer held captive by Kathy Bates; Elf, where he was Will Ferrell's skeptical father; and a parade of supporting turns that traded on the coiled menace and sly humor he'd refined over thirty years. He died in July 2022.