Photo: Albert L. Ortega/Getty
Carmine Caridi, best known for his role as Carmine Rosato inThe Godfather: Part II, has died at age 85.TMZ first reported the newson Wednesday.
The actor died on Tuesday, and had been in a coma at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.
He remains one of only three actors to play two different roles in theGodfatherfilm franchise, as he portrayed Albert Volpe in the third film, who is killed at a hotel in Atlantic City.
His character in the second film, Carmine Rosato, was heavily involved in the feud with Frank Pentangeli (Michael Gazzo).
He also appeared in several television shows, such as ’70s sitcomPhyllisandNYPD Bluefrom 1993-1999.
Caridi was also involved in a controversy in 2004, when The Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences discovered screeners of movies on the internet that they traced back to the actor.
The FBI opened an investigation, finding that for at least three years, Caridi had been sharing screeners of his films in attempt to gain consideration for Academy Awards.
“Let me tell you something,” Caridi said toThe Hollywood Reporterin 2017. “Everybody does it, OK? I was doing a guy a favor and he screwed me.”
Caridi met a man named Russell Sprague through a mutual friend, according to the outlet. Sprague fixed his broken VCR, and asked if he could borrow some screeners, which Caridi agreed to. Soon, he began sending them to Sprague via FedEx.
“I would send them to him before I even looked at them,” Caridi toldTHR.“And then he would copy them and send them back.”
The FBI learned of his lending and he was called in to their Los Angeles office, where officials offered him immunity in return for naming Sprague.
“I thought I was going to jail,” he said. “If I didn’t, they would have handcuffed me.”
In February 2004, the Academy’s board of governors voted to expel Caridi: “They wrote me a letter,” he recalled. “‘You’re finished.’”
Caridi became the first Academy member to be expelled.
He continued to act following the controversy (most recently in a 2019 episode of HBO’sCurb Your Enthusiasm), tellingTHRat the time that he didn’t blame the Academy because he did violate their rules. He revealed he still received screeners from the Screen Actors Guild.
“Some, not as much as I got from the Academy,” he said, adding, “I lend them to my neighbor.”
source: people.com
