Tom Sizemore

Thomas Edward Sizemore Jr. was an American actor and producer whose screen career was built around intense supporting and character roles in crime films, war dramas, action pictures, and television. He was born in Detroit, Michigan, on November 29, 1961, and studied theatre at Wayne State University before earning a master's degree at Temple University. Sizemore began appearing on screen in the late 1980s, with early credits in Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July, the prison drama Lock Up, and the Kathryn Bigelow thriller Blue Steel. Those roles established him as a forceful presence who could make police officers, soldiers, criminals, and working-class men feel dangerous, wounded, or unexpectedly loyal.

Sizemore's profile rose quickly in the 1990s. He appeared in Point Break, Passenger 57, True Romance, Striking Distance, Natural Born Killers, Strange Days, Devil in a Blue Dress, and Wyatt Earp, and he became especially associated with Michael Mann's Heat, in which he played Michael Cheritto, one of the professional thieves around Robert De Niro's Neil McCauley. He also took leading roles, including Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta in the creature thriller The Relic, while remaining most widely recognized for muscular ensemble work. His recurring role on China Beach and later television appearances showed that his screen persona could fit both network drama and hard-edged feature films.

His most visible period came around the turn of the millennium. In Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, Sizemore played Technical Sergeant Mike Horvath, the steady second-in-command to Tom Hanks's Captain Miller; the role became one of his best-known performances. He followed it with Martin Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead, the HBO television film Witness Protection, and major war films including Pearl Harbor and Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down. Witness Protection brought him a Golden Globe nomination, and his voice work as Sonny Forelli in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City introduced him to a video-game audience. Throughout this period he often played men whose authority was complicated by volatility, fear, or moral exhaustion.