Tom Sizemore, who starred in the film "Saving Private Ryan" and whose rising star in the 1990s faded due to his intimate partner violence and drug affairs, died Friday. He was 61 years old.
The actor had suffered a brain aneurysm on February 18 at his home in Los Angeles. He died while asleep at a hospital in Burbank, California, his representative Charles Lago said.
Sizemor became a star whose performances drew acclaim for his roles in "Natural Born Killers" and the classic crime thriller "Heat."
However, his severe dependency on substance use, accusations of abuse and multiple brushes with the law destroyed his career, he lost his home and ended up in prison.
As the wave of the global “MeToo” movement peaked in late 2017, Sizemore was also accused of groping an 11-year-old Utah girl on stage in 2003. No charges were filed against him.
Despite his numerous legal troubles, Sizemore maintained steady film and television credits, though his career never reached its peak again.
Aside from “Black Hawk Down” and “Pearl Harbor,” most of his performances in the 21st century were in low-budget, less-exposed productions in which he continued to play the gruff, rugged characters that made him famous.
“I was a person who came from the bottom and reached the top. I had a million-dollar house, the Porsche, the restaurant I co-owned with Robert De Niro," the Detroit-born Sizemore wrote in his 2013 memoir "By Some Miracle I Made It Out of There." of miracle). "And now I have absolutely nothing."
The title of the book was taken from a phrase expressed by his character in "Saving Private Ryan", a role for which he sounded like a possible Oscar contender.
However, the actor wrote that that success made him a "spoiled movie star," an "arrogant fool" and ultimately an "addicted to the hope of dying."
The artist was arrested several times for intimate partner violence. Sizemore was once married, to actress Maeve Quinland, and was arrested because he allegedly beat her in 1997. Although the charges were dropped, the couple divorced in 1999.
Sizemore was found guilty of battering his ex-girlfriend Heidi Fleiss in 2003, the same year he pleaded no contest and avoided trial in a separate battering case, and was sentenced to prison.
Fleiss testified that Sizemore had beaten her in New York to the point that they were unable to attend the "Black Hawk Down" premiere.
