The tough-guy actor who battled addiction

Tom Sizemore 1961–2023

Tom Sizemore trafficked in menace and mayhem both onscreen and off. The actor earned acclaim for the intensity he brought to roles as gangsters, corrupt cops, soldiers, and psychopaths, including a murderous detective in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994), the enforcer in Robert De Niro’s bankrobbing gang in Heat (1995), and Tom Hanks’ second-in-command in Steven Spielberg’s World War II drama Saving Private Ryan (1998). But Sizemore’s successes were soon eclipsed by his personal turmoil. In and out of rehab for heroin and cocaine addiction, he faced bankruptcy and homelessness. He served time for drug offenses and for physically abusing girlfriend Heidi Fleiss, aka the “Hollywood Madam,” in 2003. In later years Sizemore, who died from a stroke and brain aneurysm, faced additional battery arrests and a 2017 conviction. “I have permitted my personal demons to take over my life,” he wrote to the judge in the Fleiss case.

Sizemore grew up in Detroit, where his father was a lawyer and philosophy professor and his mother worked for the city ombudsman, said The Times (U.K.). By his own account a wayward and angry teenager, he decided to become an actor at 15, “inspired by the films of James Dean and Marlon Brando.” He studied acting at Temple University, then moved to New York, where he waited tables and acted off-Broadway. Relocating to Hollywood, Sizemore got his first break in 1989 with a bit part as a disabled Vietnam vet in Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July. He then “seemingly exploded into Hollywood overnight,” said Rolling Stone. He worked with his hero De Niro—who corralled him into rehab in 1998—and was cast by a slew of “big-time directors” including Tony Scott (True Romance), Martin Scorsese (Bringing Out the Dead), and Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor) before substance abuse issues began to derail his career.

Even while personal travails “sent him spiraling,” Sizemore continued to work, said New York magazine, albeit in diminished roles and increasingly low-budget productions. In 2007 he appeared in Shooting Sizemore, a reality series about his addiction struggles; in 2010 he was featured on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. By then he was in rehab for the ninth time. “I’ve led an interesting life,” he wrote in a 2013 memoir, “but I can’t tell you what I’d give to be the guy you didn’t know anything about.”