While tributes to James Caan poured in after the news of his death, there is one former co-star that didn’t have pleasant memories of their time together. James Caan appeared in the iconic 1972 film The Godfather and one of his co-stars was Gianni Russo.
Gianni claims that James was rude to him on the set. Years later, when Gianni was working on the 1999 film Any Given Sunday, James’ agent called him. Gianni explained, “He said, ‘You know, Jimmy would be great in this movie. He’s a great sports buff.’ I said, ‘Do you think I would hire James Caan? I wouldn’t give Jimmy Caan a part in anything.’ He was so rude to me.”
Giani Russo claims that ‘Godfather’ co-star James Caan was rude to him the whole time they filmed
He added that even before they started filming The Godfather, James wasn’t nice to him. At first, he thought he was just in character the whole time but quickly realized that he was just disliked. If you’ve seen the film, you may remember a time when their characters were physically fighting. While a stunt double was used, Gianni says that he did get injured by James while they were filming.
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He said, “That’s me. He’s biting my hand; he’s banging my elbow with that steel garbage pail. He chipped my elbow. When I crawled out and he lifted me in the air, he broke two of my ribs, which was not in the rehearsal. That was me laying there.”
Gianni continued, “He discredits me even doing the scene. Unfortunately, we’re talking about a guy that’s dead, and to his dying day, that’s his story. He took it to his grave, as we would say.”
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