Burt Young, the Oscar-nominated actor who played Paulie, Sylvester Stallone’s crude, mumbler, grumpy friend, cornerman and brother-in-law in the “Rocky” franchise, has died.
Young died Oct. 8 in Los Angeles, his daughter, Anne Morea Steingieser, told the New York Times on Wednesday. The cause of death has not been provided. He is 83 years old.
Young has had roles in acclaimed films and television shows, including “Chinatown,” “Once Upon a Time in America” and “The Sopranos. “
But he’s best known for playing Paulie Pennino in six “Rocky” movies. Young, short, burly, bald, he was the kind of actor who seemed to play a middle-aged man, no matter how old he was.
When Paulie first appears in “Rocky” in 1976, he’s an angry, rude meatpacker who abuses his sister Adrian (Talia Shire), with whom he shares a small apartment in Philadelphia. refusing to go on a Thanksgiving night date with her boyfriend and colleague Rocky Balboa, and destroys a turkey she has in the oven.
The film has become a phenomenon, topping the year’s box office and making stars for the lead actor and Stallone, who paid tribute to Young on Instagram on Wednesday night.
Featuring a photo of the two of them on the set of the first film, Stallone wrote, “You were a boy and an artist, me and the world will miss you so much. “
“Rocky” has been nominated for 10 Academy Awards, Best Young Supporting Actor. She won three, Best Película. La young co-star Burgess Meredith, also nominated, lost to Jason Robards in “All the President’s Men. “
As the films progressed, Paulie de Young softened, as did the sequels themselves, and he his comic relief. In 1985’s “Rocky IV,” he reprograms a robot that Rocky provides him to turn into a sexy-voiced servant who loves him.
Paulie was also an eternal pessimist who was constantly convinced that Rocky was going to be defeated by his intimidating opponents. His astonishment at Rocky’s resistance drew great laughter.
“It was a wonderful adventure and it brought me closer to the public in a wonderful way,” Young said in a 2020 interview with Celebrity Parents magazine. “I made him a tough, susceptible guy. It’s a marshmallow though it screams lot. “
Born and raised in Queens, New York, Young served in the Marine Corps, fought as a professional boxer, and worked as a carpet layer before turning to acting and with legendary professor Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.
On stage, film, and television, he played difficult or unfortunate working-class guys.
In a brief but memorable scene from 1974’s “Chinatown,” he plays a fisherman who gets angry when Jack Nicholson’s personal investigator, Jake Gittes, shows him photographs that prove his wife is cheating on him.
Young also made that impression in director Sergio Leone’s 1984 gangster epic “Once Upon a Time in America,” starring Robert De Niro, the 1986 comedy “Back to School,” starring Rodney Dangerfield, and the gritty 1989 drama “Last Exit to Brooklyn,” starring Jennifer. Jason Leigh. .
In a surprise appearance on the third season of “The Sopranos” in 2001, he played Bobby Baccalieri Sr. , an elderly mobster with lung cancer who fires one last shot before a cough leads to his death in a car accident.
He has starred in many other television series, including “M*A*S*H,” “Miami Vice,” and “The Equalizer. “
Later in his life, he worked in theatre and painting, a lifelong pursuit that led to exhibitions and gallery sales.
His wife of thirteen years, Gloria, died in 1974.
Along with his daughter, Young is survived by a grandson and a brother, Robert.