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‘Saving Private Ryan’ actor Tom Sizemore dies at 61
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Despite his success in Hollywood, Sizemore struggled with serious substance dependency, abuse allegations and multiple run-ins with the law, which ultimately devastated his career.
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Tom Sizemore, the actor best known for his roles in “Saving Private Ryan,” “Natural Born Killers” and “Heat,” passed away peacefully in his sleep on Friday, according to his manager Charles Lago.
The 61-year-old actor had suffered a brain aneurysm on February 18 at his Los Angeles home and was removed from life support after doctors concluded that nothing more could be done for him, his manager said.
Sizemore’s brother Paul and his 17-year-old twin boys, Jayden and Jagger, were by his side when he passed away, Lago added.
Fall from grace
Despite his success in Hollywood, Sizemore struggled with serious substance dependency, abuse allegations and multiple run-ins with the law.
Sizemore had a string of domestic violence arrests, including one for allegedly beating his then-wife, actor Maeve Quinlan, in 1997. While the charges were dropped, the couple divorced in 1999.
In 2003, Sizemore was convicted of abusing ex-girlfriend Heidi Fleiss and sentenced to jail. The same year, he pleaded no contest and avoided trial in a separate abuse case.
Sizemore was also the subject of two workplace sexual harassment lawsuits during his stint on the 2002 CBS show “Robbery Homicide Division.”
He was arrested for domestic violence as recently as 2016.
In 2017, during the #MeToo movement, he was accused of groping an 11-year-old Utah girl on set in 2003. No charges were filed against him.
Due to multiple failed drug tests while on probation and the discovery of methamphetamine in his car by California authorities, Sizemore was incarcerated from August 2007 to January 2009.
In his 2013 memoir, “By Some Miracle I Made It Out of There,” Sizemore wrote about his rise to fame and subsequent fall from grace, saying, “I was a guy who’d come from very little and risen to the top. I’d had the multimillion-dollar house, the Porsche, the restaurant I partially owned with Robert De Niro. And now I had absolutely nothing.”
In his book, named after a line uttered by his character in “Saving Private Ryan,” he wrote that success turned him into a “spoiled movie star,” an “arrogant fool” and eventually “a hope-to-die addict.”
