Tom Sizemore, the actor known for portraying Tom Hanks’ second-in-command in 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, was in critical condition on Sunday after suffering a brain aneurysm, his representative said.
Sizemore, 61, had been hospitalized and was in a “wait and see situation,” spokesperson Charles Lago said. “His family is aware and waiting for updates,” Lago added.
Later on Sunday, Lago told NBC News that Sizemore was not responding to treatment.
Besides his role as Sgt. Mike Horvath in Steven Spielberg’s war epic, Sizemore is known for playing tough guys and psychopaths in a spate of action and crime flicks throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Among other credits, his best-known projects include Heat, Pearl Harbor, Natural Born Killers, and Black Hawk Down.
He also appeared on television shows like Twin Peaks: The Return and Cobra Kai.
In 2000, he was nominated for a Golden Globe for his work in Witness Protection, a made-for-TV film based on a 1996 New York Times Magazine article.
The actor’s career has also been defined by a long battle with substance abuse issues. In 1998, he recalled to The Independent that Robert De Niro, his Heat co-star, had saved his life by all but forcing him into rehab.
“I’m in his car and he’s driving me to the airport, he’s telling me that the gig is up, he’s telling me I’m a wonderful actor, that he’s not gonna let me die. ‘I love you,’ he told me, like you’re my son,” a visibly emotional Sizemore said. “I didn’t wanna go. But I couldn’t say no to him.”
He told Larry King in 2010 that he’d struggled with cocaine, heroin, and meth; most recently, in 2019, he was arrested for misdemeanor possession of “various illegal narcotics” in California.
In a 2021 interview with Fox News Digital, Sizemore opened up about his fight to get sober, explaining he’d first attempted to get clean in 1991. “I’ve had a problem for a long time,” he said. “I had periods, long periods, of sobriety and I would end up relapsing.”
In 2003, he was convicted of domestic violence against his former fiancée Heidi Fleiss. Sizemore denied the charges, and later repeatedly violated his probationary sentence for the crime, prosecutors then said.
In recent years, Sizemore’s career has progressed steadily, with the actor lining up several projects slated for a 2023 release, according to his IMDb page.
