(Los Angeles) Burt Young, the Oscar-nominated actor who played Paulie, Sylvester Stallone’s grumpy best friend and brother-in-law in the Rocky series, has died.
Young died Oct. 8 in Los Angeles, his daughter, Anne Morea Steingieser, told the New York Times on Wednesday. No cause of death was given. He was 83 years old.
Young has had roles in noted films and television shows, including Chinatown, Once Upon a Time in America, and The Sopranos.
But he was always best known for playing Paulie Pennino in six Rocky films. Young, short, paunchy and bald, was the kind of actor who always seemed to play a middle-aged man, no matter how old he was.
When Paulie first appears in 1976’s Rocky, he is an angry, foul-mouthed meatpacker who abuses his sister Adrian (Talia Shire), with whom he shares a small apartment in Philadelphia. He scolds the shy and meek Adrian for initially refusing to go on a Thanksgiving night date with his boyfriend and co-worker Rocky Balboa, and destroying a turkey she has in the oven.
The film became a phenomenon, topping the box office that year and making a star of lead actor and screenwriter Stallone, who paid tribute to Young on Instagram Wednesday night.
Along with a photo of them on the set of the first film, Stallone wrote: “You were an incredible man and artist, I and everyone will miss you very much.”
Rocky was nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actor for Young. It won three, including best film.
As the films progressed, Paulie mellowed, much like the sequels themselves, and he became one-note comedy. In 1985’s Rocky IV, he reprograms a robot Rocky gives him into a lascivious-voiced servant, who is crazy about him.
Paulie was also an eternal pessimist who was constantly convinced that Rocky was going to be bullied by his increasingly intimidating opponents. His surprise at Rocky’s resilience sparked big laughs.
“It was a great adventure, and it brought me to the public in a great way,” he said in an interview with Celebrity Parents magazine in 2020.
“I made him a tough, sensitive guy. He’s really a marshmallow even though he screams a lot. »
Born and raised in the Queens borough of New York, Young served in the Marine Corps, fought as a professional boxer, and worked as a carpet layer before venturing into acting and studying with the legendary teacher Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.
On stage, film and television, he generally played tough guys or down-on-his-luck working-class men.
