Burt Young, an actor known from the “Rocky” film series, has died at the age of 83. In the production, he played the role of a friend of Sylvester Stallone’s character and received an Oscar nomination for it.
Burt Young died on October 8 in Los Angeles. Information about the actor’s death was confirmed on Wednesday by his manager, Lynda Bensky, in an interview with Reuters. Earlier, the news was announced by his daughter, Anne Morea Steingieser, in an interview with the New York Times. Sylvester Stallone has already expressed his condolences on Instagram. “To my friend, Burt Young. You were an amazing man and artist, I and the world will miss you very much,” he wrote and published a photo together.
Burt Young is dead
Young was born in 1940 in New York as Gerald Tommaso DeLouise. In the late 1950s he served in the US Marine Corps. He studied acting with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. During his career, he played mainly roles of heroes with American-Italian roots.
He was best known for his role in the “Rocky” film series, where he played Paulie Pennino, the brother-in-law and friend of boxer Rocky Balboa, a character played by Sylvester Stallone. The film premiered in 1976, and the production later had six sequels, in which Young also starred. For his role as Paulie, he received a nomination Oscar for best supporting actor.
Other productions in which Young has appeared include: “Chinatown” Roman Polanski, “The Pope of Greenwich Village”, “Once Upon a Time in America”, as well as the series “M*A*S*H”, “the Rockford Files”, “Baretta” and “Law and Order”. During his career, he also worked as a painter, and his works were exhibited in galleries around the world.
Main photo source: Vit Simanek/CTK/PAP