Tom Sizemore, 'Saving Private Ryan' star, dies at 61

Tom Sizemore, who played Private Ryan in "Saving Private Ryan," died on Friday at age 61. His bright star in the 1990s faded because of his own domestic violence and drug charges.

On February 18 at his home in Los Angeles, the actor had a brain aneurysm. His manager, Charles Lago, said that he died in his sleep at a hospital in Burbank, California, on Friday.

Sizemore's roles in "Natural Born Killers" and the cult classic crime thriller "Heat" made him a star. But his addiction to drugs, accusations of abuse, and many run-ins with the law ruined his career, left him homeless, and put him in jail.

Late in 2017, when the #MeToo movement reached its peak around the world, Sizemore was also accused of touching a Utah girl who was 11 years old on set in 2003. He said that the accusations were "very disturbing" and that he would never touch a child in an inappropriate way. No charges were made.

Even though Sizemore had a lot of legal problems, he kept working steadily in movies and TV shows, but his career never got back to where it used to be. With the exception of "Black Hawk Down" and "Pearl Harbor." Most of his roles in the 21st century was in low-budget, little-seen movies where he played the same rough, tough guys he was known for.

"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, the Detroit-born Sizemore wrote in his 2013 memoir "By Some Miracle, I Made It Out of There". And now I had absolutely nothing.

The title of the book came from a line that his character said in "Saving Private Ryan, a role for which he garnered Oscar buzz. But he wrote that success turned him into a "spoiled movie star", an "arrogant fool" and eventually "a hope-to-die addict".

He was arrested several times for fighting with his family. Sizemore was once married to actress Maeve Quinlan. In 1997, he was arrested on charges of beating her. Even though the charges were dropped, the couple ended up splitting up in 1999.

Sizemore was found guilty of abusing his ex-girlfriend Heidi Fleiss in 2003. That same year, he pleaded no contest and went to jail instead of going to trial for another abuse case. The former Hollywood whore said that he punched her in the jaw at a hotel in Beverly Hills and beat her so badly in New York that they couldn't go to the "Black Hawk Down" premiere together.

The judge who gave the sentence said that drug use was probably a factor, but that testimony showed that the man had a lot of trouble with women. After Sizemore was found guilty, Fleiss told The Associated Press that he was "a zero."

Sizemore wrote her an apology letter in which he said he was "chastened", and that "personal demons" had taken over his life. He later denied abusing her and said that a picture of her bruises was faked.

Fleiss also sued Sizemore, saying that he hurt her feelings when he said he would get her probation taken away. In 1994, Fleiss was found guilty of running a high-priced call-girl ring. The terms of the settlement were not made public.

Sizemore was sued twice for sexual harassment at work because of his role as a police detective on the 2002 CBS show "Robbery Homicide Division." He was arrested in 2016 for another case of violence against a family member.

Sizemore went to jail from August 2007 to January 2009 because he failed a lot of drug tests while on probation and because authorities in Bakersfield, California, found methamphetamine in his car.

In an interview from jail, Sizemore told The Bakersfield Californian, "God is trying to tell me that he doesn't want me to use drugs because every time I do, I get caught."

Sizemore told the AP in 2013 that he thought his addiction was caused by the things that come with being successful. He had a hard time keeping his emotions in check as he talked about a low point he saw in the mirror: "I looked as if I were a hundred years old. I didn't get along with my kids, and I didn't have any work to talk about. I lived in a squat."

He was on "Celebrity Rehab" and "Sober House," which was a spinoff of "Celebrity Rehab." He told the Associated Press that he did the shows partly to get help and partly to pay off millions of dollars in debts.

Sizemore's later movies were mostly science fiction, horror, or action: Just in 2022, he was in movies called "Impuratus," "Night of the Tommyknockers," and "Vampfather."

But Sizemore still got a few meaty roles, such as in the revival of "Twin Peaks" and as a guest star on "Entourage" and "Hawaii Five-O."

In 2016, a stuntman sued Sizemore and Paramount Pictures, saying that the actor hurt him when he ran him over while they were filming USA's Shooter.

The AP looked at state records and found that Sizemore was only supposed to be sitting in the car that wasn't moving. Instead, he "improvised at the end of the scene and drove away in his car." Sizemore was fired from the movie "Shooter," and the stuntman's lawsuit was settled on terms that were not made public.

In addition to movies and TV shows, he also did voices for the "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" video game, which came out in 2002. Recent ads say that he also taught acting classes at the LA West Acting Studio.

His twin sons, Jayden and Jagger, who are 17 years old, and his brother, Paul, were all with him when he died.

Sizemore wrote in his autobiography, "I've led an interesting life, but I can't tell you what I'd give to be the guy you didn't know anything about,".