Burt Young
Burt Young is an actor, born 1940.
Burt Young was born Gerald Tommaso DeLouise in New York City in 1940 and died in 2023, and the credit that defines him arrived in the middle of an already working career. Before Rocky he had spent the first half of the seventies playing hoods and functionaries: Born to Win, Across 110th Street, Cinderella Liberty, Curly the sobbing client in the opening scene of Chinatown, The Gambler, The Killer Elite, and a run of television including Baretta.
Rocky in 1976 gave him Paulie Pennino and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and what makes the performance last is that Young never asked to be liked. Paulie is self-pitying, resentful, occasionally frightening and entirely dependent on the one friend he has, and the actor plays all of it without pleading for sympathy. He came back five more times, through Rocky Balboa in 2006, which is thirty years with a character most actors would have sanded smooth by the second film.
Away from the series he was one of American film's most convincing heavies and sad men. He is the violent father in Amityville II: The Possession, Bed Bug Eddie in The Pope of Greenwich Village, Pig Pen in Convoy, Joe in Once Upon a Time in America, Lou in Back to School, Big Joe in Last Exit to Brooklyn.
The last stretch was gentler. Leo Poplar in Win Win is a frail old man handled with real tenderness, and there were late turns in Rob the Mob, Horace and Pete and Russian Doll.
Movies (48)
- Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
- Rocky (1976)
- ...All the Marbles (1981)
- Rocky III (1982)
- Rocky II (1979)
- Rocky IV (1985)
- Rocky Balboa (2006)
- Rocky V (1990)
- Chinatown (1974)
- New York, I Love You (2008)
- Bio. (2005)
- Convoy (1978)
- Win Win (2011)
- Back to School (1986)
- Amityville II: The Possession (1982)
- The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)
- Blood Beach (1980)
- Mickey Blue Eyes (1999)
- The Gambler (1974)
- Transamerica (2005)
- Rob the Mob (2014)
- Betsy's Wedding (1990)
- She's So Lovely (1997)
- The Killer Elite (1975)
- Carlito's Way: Rise to Power (2005)
- Go Go Tales (2008)
- Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989)
- Vault (2019)
- The Deli (1997)
- The Brawler (2019)
TV (7)
Where to start with Burt Young
Rocky first, and pay attention to Paulie rather than the fight. Young is playing the friend who cannot be got rid of, and the film is better for refusing to make him charming.
After that the interesting question is how wide the range went. Chinatown has him in one scene at the very start, crying over photographs, and it sets the tone for everything after. Once Upon a Time in America and The Pope of Greenwich Village are the crime pictures where he is most at home. Back to School proves he was funny on purpose.
Then jump to the end: Win Win gives him an old man with nothing left to be tough about, and Rocky Balboa lets him play Paulie in his sixties without a trace of nostalgia. Russian Doll is the last curiosity, a small part in a show built entirely out of repetition.