Caan was already a star on television, breaking through in the 1971 TV movie Brian’s Song, an emotional drama about Chicago Bears running back Brian Piccolo, who had died of cancer the year before at age 26. It was among the most popular and wrenching TV movies in history and Caan and co-star Billy Dee Williams, who played Piccolo’s teammate and best friend Gale Sayers, were nominated for best actor Emmys.

After Brian’s Song and The Godfather, he was one of Hollywood’s busiest actors, appearing in Hide in Plain Sight (which he also directed), Funny Lady (opposite Barbra Streisand), The Killer Elite and Neil Simon’s Chapter Two, among others. He also made a brief appearance in a flashback sequence in The Godfather, Part II.

But by the early 1980s he began to sour on films, though Michael Mann’s 1981 neo-noir heist film Thief, in which he played a professional safecracker looking for a way out, is among his most admired films.

“The fun of it was taken away,” he told an interviewer in 1981. “I’ve done pictures where I’d rather do time. I just walked out of a picture at Paramount. I said you haven’t got enough money to make me go to work every day with a director I don’t like.”

He had begun to struggle with drug use and was devastated by the 1981 leukemia death of his sister, Barbara, who until then had been a guiding force in his career. For much of the 1980s he made no films, telling people he preferred to coach his son Scott’s Little League games.

Short on cash, Caan was hired by Coppola for the leading role in the 1987 film Gardens of Stone. The movie, about life at Arlington National Cemetery, proved too grim for most audiences, but it renewed Caan’s acting career.

He returned to full-fledged stardom opposite Kathy Bates in Misery in 1990. In the film, based on Stephen King’s novel, Caan is an author taken captive by an obsessed fan who breaks his ankles to keep him from leaving. Bates won an Oscar for the role.

Once again in demand, Caan starred in For the Boys with Bette Midler in 1991 as part of a song-and-dance team entertaining American soldiers during World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars. The following year he played a tongue-in-cheek version of Sonny Corleone in the comedy Honeymoon in Vegas, tricking Nicolas Cage into betting his girlfriend, Sarah Jessica Parker, in a high-stakes poker game so he can spirit her away and try to persuade her to marry him.

Other later films included Flesh and Bone, Bottle Rocket and Mickey Blue Eyes. He introduced himself to a new generation playing Walter, the workaholic, stone-faced father of Buddy’s Will Ferrell in Elf.

Caan didn’t take a starring role in a TV series until 2003 but his first effort, Las Vegas, was an immediate hit. When the series debuted, he was a casino surveillance chief dealing with cheaters and competitors of the fictional Montecito Resort and Casino.

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His character rose to become boss of the Montecito but remained the tough guy who had learned judo in an undercover division of the US government. Caan left the show during the fourth season and it was later cancelled.

Born March 26, 1939, in New York City, Caan was the son of a kosher meat wholesaler. He was a star athlete and class president at Rhodes High School and, after attending Michigan State and Hofstra University, he studied at the Neighbourhood Playhouse School of the Theatre under Sanford Meisner.

Following a brief stage career, he moved to Hollywood. He made his movie debut in a brief uncredited role in 1963 in Billy Wilder’s Irma La Douce, then landed a role as young thug who terrorises Olivia de Havilland in Lady in a Cage. He also appeared opposite John Wayne and Robert Mitchum in the 1966 Western El Dorado and Harrison Ford in the 1968 Western Journey to Shiloh.

Married and divorced four times, Caan had a daughter, Tara, and sons Scott, Alexander, James and Jacob.

AP

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