James Caan

After spending his youth in Queens, New York, James Caan joined Michigan State University at the age of sixteen to study economics and play American football. He then turned to legal training at Hofstra University , but an audition allowed him to enter the Neigborhood Playhouse in Sanford Meisner. He subsequently obtained a scholarship to study with Wynn Handman, a famous drama teacher, and landed the first four roles for which he was auditioned.

James Caan made his debut on stage in 1961 in "La Ronde" then played "Mandingo" and "Blood, sweat and Stanley Poole" on Broadway. After several appearances in TV series (Naked City, The Untouchables, etc.), he appears for the first time in the cinema in Irma la Douce (1963) by Billy Wilder and after a remarkable passage in two feature films by Howard Hawks (Ligne rouge 7000 (1965) and El Dorado (1967) alongside John Wayne), he found himself headlining in People of the Rain (1969) by Francis Ford Coppola.

After his brilliant performance as a trepanned footballer, he turns again under the direction of Coppola in The Godfather, where in the role of the brutal Sonny Corleone he forms a surprising contrast with the other son, more intellectual, played by Al Pacino. This family fresco imposes him on Hollywood and allows him to be nominated in 1972 for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Now a leading actor, he plays a university professor in the grip of the gambling demon in Le Flambeur (1974) and plays the counterpart to Barbra Streisand in the musical Funny Lady (1975) by Herbert Ross.

In 1975, his past as a great sportsman allowed James Caan to take on particularly physical roles: he performed his own stunts in Norman Jewison's futuristic and violent Rollerball and practiced martial arts for the needs of Elite Killer, a film of spying on Sam Peckinpah. The following year, he joined the prestigious cast of Un pont trop loin (1977) and was directed by Claude Lelouch in Another man, another chance (id.), A mixture of romance and western with for canvas background the United States of the 1870s. The two men will collaborate again together on Les Uns et les autres in 1981.

In 1980, James Caan took the stage for the first and only time in The Impossible Witness, which turned out to be a commercial failure. Despite everything, he continued his film career by playing the aces of the robbery in The Solitaire (1981) by Michael Mann. After an absence of five years on the screen, he found the director who revealed him internationally, Francis Ford Coppola, for the needs of Stone Gardens (1987), a military drama set in the Vietnam War. He continued with the filming of Immediate Future Los Angeles 1991 (1988), where he played a police officer collaborating with an alien, then played the gangster Spaldoni opposite Warren Beatty in the police comedy Dick Tracy (1990).

In the 90s, James Caan is more prolific: he is in turn the writer Paul Sheldon held prisoner by Kathy Bates in Misery (1990), the film adaptation of the novel by Stephen King, the great music hall star. Eddie Sparks in For the boys (1991), the murderous father of Dennis Quaid in Flesh and bone (1993) or the mentor and adversary of Arnold Schwarzenegger in L'Effaceur (1996).

The broad-shouldered actor also shows remarkable charisma when it comes to portraying an unsavory employer in The Yards (2000) or a dirty henchman in Way of the Gun (id. ). These rather serious roles did not prevent him, however, from playing in lighter films like Mickey the blue eyes (1999), where he parodies himself as a mafia godfather, and Elfe (2003), where he slips into the skin of a sinister editor father of a strange fellow (Will Ferrell) raised among elves.

In 2003, James Caan left the cinema and returned to his roots by filming for the small screen. In addition to appearing in many television films for American television, he plays the character of Ed Deline, head of security at a large casino,

He returned to the big screen in 2008 by playing the President of the United States alongside Steve Carell in Max the Threat, as well as by integrating the glittery cast of New York, I Love You, led in particular by Natalie Portman, Bradley Cooper or again Orlando Bloom. The following year, the actor tried again to dub an animated film for Storm of giant meatballs, before returning to the set in 2012 for Detachment, a "social film" under the direction of Tony Kaye, in which he gives the reply to Adrien Brody.