Tom Sizemore, the powerful character actor known for his roles in films including Saving Private Ryan, Natural Born Killers, Heat, Black Hawk Down, and Pearl Harbor, has died at the age of 61.
Earlier this week, a representative for Sizemore’s family shared that they were deciding “end of life matters” in the wake of the actor’s brain aneurysm earlier this month.
Late Friday, a rep for the actor told TMZ he had “passed away peacefully” at an L.A.-area hospital after being taken off life support.
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“His Brother Paul and twin boys Jayden and Jagger (17) were at his side,” spokesman Charles Lago was quoted as saying.
Sizemore, born in Detroit, began his screen career in the late 1980s and achieved notoriety in the 1990s, when he often played a mixture of police officers and con artists—or some middle ground between the two. Roles in such films as Heart and Souls and True Romance in 1993, Wyatt Earp in 1994, and Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers in 1994 cemented his reputation as a charismatic powerhouse.
In 1995, the public became aware of Sizemore’s substance issues after his Heat co-star Robert de Niro staged an intervention. In a recent report about Sizemore’s health, The Wrap quotes an Access Hollywood interview from 2013 in which the actor reflected on the moment: “I walked in to see my shrink and I walked in and there were all these people there… and I sit down and Bob came in and goes, ‘OK. OK, now we can talk… Now you listen to me, I’m no psychiatrist… but you’re either going to go to rehab or go to prison,’ and in walks a cop.”
“I was trying to make a joke out of it because all these people are there and I’m embarrassed and he went, ‘Tom, I’m not playing. They’ll put you in jail for a year!’” Sizemore reportedly added.
Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Sizemore continued to turn in performances that would define his career in such films as Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down. Still, his career began to languish amid his personal troubles, which came to include drug-abuse arrests and domestic violence and abuse allegations.
As the Daily Mail noted in a 2011 report, Sizemore’s now ex-wife Maeve Quinlan accused the actor of spousal abuse in 1997. In 2016, TMZ reported that Sizemore had been arrested for domestic violence and noted he’d received a six-month jail sentence in 2003 for allegedly assaulting Heidi Fleiss, his girlfriend at the time. In 2005, a sex tape leaked in which the actor was shown having intercourse with multiple women.
In 2017—after Sizemore had begun to mount a surprising career comeback fueled in part by a stint on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew—The Hollywood Reporter reported that Sizemore had previously been removed from the set of Born Killers (a separate film from Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers) in 2003 after a then-11-year-old actress told her parents he’d touched her genitals. As People magazine noted in a recent report about Sizemore’s health, the actress sued Sizemore, who denied her allegations, in 2018 when she was in her twenties. When a Utah judge dismissed the case in 2020, the actress’s lawyer told USA Today that the decision had been made due to a recent, separate decision in Utah regarding the statute of limitations. In an emailed statement to the paper at the time, Sizemore wrote, “I hope this highly disturbing matter is finally over for all concerned.”
In spite of his frequently public personal issues, Sizemore received multiple awards and nominations throughout his career. His turn as Milo Peck in Ron Underwood’s 1993 film Heart and Souls earned him a Saturn Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In 1999, Sizemore received a SAG nomination alongside his co-stars in Saving Private Ryan, for outstanding performance by a cast. And in 2000, his performance in Witness Protection scored a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television.
In recent years, Sizemore has appeared in dozens of films. On Feb. 18, he was found unconscious in his home, and earlier this week his manager, Charles Lago, said in a statement that he’s been in a coma in intensive care since then. He noted in a statement Tuesday that doctors had told Sizemore’s family “that there is no further hope.”
