Tom Sizemore, the “Saving Private Ryan” star who forged a lengthy Hollywood profession amid addiction struggles and run-ins with law enforcement, has died. He was 61.
The veteran actor’s passing after a brain aneurysm at his Los Angeles home on Feb. 18 has been confirmed by his manager.
Sizemore “passed away peacefully in his sleep today at St. Joseph’s Hospital Burbank. His brother Paul and twin boys Jayden and Jagger were at his side,” Charles Lago told Page Six.
The news of Sizemore’s death comes after Lago revealed Monday that his medical care was at a critical turning point.
“Today, doctors informed his family that there isn’t any further hope and have really useful end-of-life decision,” Lago said in an announcement received by The Post. He added that Sizemore’s family was “deciding end-of-life matters.”
The star fought for his life at Windfall Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, after an unidentified person found Sizemore unconscious and called 911, in accordance with reports on the time.
Born on Nov. 29, 1961, in Detroit, Sizemore attended Wayne State University and received his master’s degree in theater from Temple University in 1986.
Considered one of his first acting credits was playing a veteran in Oliver Stone’s “Born on the Fourth of July,” released in 1989. He subsequently starred in several other projects, including “Lock Up,” “Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man,” “Point Break,” “True Romance,” “Natural Born Killers” and “Strange Days.”
Sizemore’s career-defining role got here within the 1998 blockbuster “Saving Private Ryan,” wherein he played Sgt. Mike Horvath.
“I had a beautiful time working with Tom Hanks — we were type of ‘good Tom’ and ‘bad Tom,’ and you’ll be able to guess who was which,” Sizemore wrote of “Saving Private Ryan” in his 2013 memoir, “By Some Miracle I Made It Out of There.”
“My character’s real purpose within the movie was to maintain Hanks’s character alive and ensure that that the opposite men didn’t see that he was falling apart. At the top of the shoot, Tom wrote me a wonderful note about how he’d always remember making the movie with me.”
“Saving Private Ryan” went on to win five Oscars, including best director for Steven Spielberg.
Sizemore’s other notable movies include “Pearl Harbor” and “Heat.” He also appeared in six episodes of the TV series “Twin Peaks” in 2017, and he voiced Sonny Forelli within the 2002 video game “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.”
Considered one of his last movies was “The Legend of Jack and Diane” in 2022. He’s attached to projects due out in 2023 and 2024 as well.
The embattled actor publicly struggled with cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine addictions and bumped into legal trouble for drug possession and domestic abuse. He appeared on “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew” in 2010.
While promoting his memoir, Sizemore claimed his “Heat” co-star Robert DeNiro urged him to attend rehab after they wrapped filming the 1995 movie.
“I walked in to see my shrink, and I walked in, and there have been all these people there … and I sit down and Bob got here in and goes, ‘OK. OK, now we will talk … Now you take heed to me, I’m no psychiatrist … but you’re either going to go to rehab or go to prison and in walks a cop,’” Sizemore told Access Hollywood about his family-led intervention.
“I used to be attempting to make a joke out of it because all these individuals are there and I’m embarrassed, and he went, ‘Tom, I’m not playing. They’ll put you in jail for a yr,’” he added.
“I did the last scene of ‘Heat’ and I used to be imagined to go to rehab right then, but I had my assistant drive my automobile … and I dove into the back seat of a moving vehicle with my prosthetics on and I drove to the Loews Hotel and I checked in under the name Amiel Gooch, and Bob [DeNiro] finally tracked me down over there, and once I knew he was closing in on me, I hung off the balcony,” Sizemore explained.
Sizemore was married to “The Daring and the Beautiful” actress Maeve Quinlan from 1996 until 1999. Quinlan called the police after a violent argument at their home in 1997. She later dropped the costs, chalking the incident as much as a “huge misunderstanding.”
Sizemore’s abusive repute persevered. In 2003, he was convicted of domestic violence against his then-girlfriend, Heidi Fleiss. “The Hollywood Madam” had nothing but negative things to say about her former beau in a 2017 interview with USA Today.
“He would bring home these weird things. They were so degrading,” Fleiss told the outlet of Sizemore’s alleged porn preferences.
“Nobody may have more disgusting stories in Hollywood than him,” she added. “I even have handled plenty of people doing plenty of various things. It’s different with Tom. He’s a complete other level.”
Sizemore dated Janelle McIntire from 2003 until 2006. McIntire gave birth to the couple’s twin boys, Jagger and Jayden Sizemore, in July 2005.
Months later, a sex tape called “The Tom Sizemore Sex Scandal” was released, allegedly capturing the actor engaging in hard-core scenes with up to a few women at a time, distributor Vivid Entertainment claimed on the time. Sizemore reportedly alleged within the video that he connected with Paris Hilton, which she denied.
Sizemore pleaded no contest in 2006 to using methamphetamine outside a California motel and was sentenced to 36 months of probation.
In 2009, he was arrested twice in LA for suspected battery of a former spouse and for allegedly transporting or selling a controlled substance, in accordance with the Los Angeles Times.
He again pleaded no contest to 2 domestic violence charges for assaulting his girlfriend — a deal that made him avoid more jail time — in February 2017.
That November, former child actress Kiersten Pyke alleged to the Hollywood Reporter that Sizemore had molested her on the set of “Natural Born Killers” in 2003 when she was just 11 years old. He was kicked off the set for a temporary time as a consequence of the accusation but was allowed back to finish the project.
The actress filed a lawsuit against Sizemore in May 2018 searching for $3 million, claiming his alleged abuse caused longstanding emotional problems. His publicist denied the allegation, and a Utah judge dismissed the lawsuit in August 2020.
“Beyond the loss of labor and the pain and humiliation this has caused me and my family, the thought that an 11-year-old girl would think I violated her, whether it’s because she misconstrued some inadvertent touching when the director placed her upon my lap for the photo shoot or another person instilled this concept in her head for whatever malicious, self-serving reasons, is what devastates me most,” Sizemore said, partially, in an announcement to USA Today.
Based on his IMDb profile, Sizemore was still linked to dozens of projects in production or post-production this yr.
His final accomplished works include an episode on the upcoming sixth season of the tv series “Cobra Kai” and the 2023 disaster flick “Bermuda Island.”
