‘Saving Private Ryan’ actor Tom Sizemore dead at 61 after brain aneurysm

Tom Sizemore, the “Saving Private Ryan” star who forged a lengthy Hollywood career amid addiction struggles and run-ins with law enforcement, has died. He was 61.

The veteran actor’s passing after a brain aneurysm as the result of a stroke at his Los Angeles home on Feb. 18 has been confirmed by his manager Charles Lago.

Sizemore “passed away peacefully in his sleep today at St. Joseph’s Hospital Burbank. His brother Paul and twin boys Jayden and Jagger were at his side,” Lago, who called the actor his “mentor,” told The Post.

“The Sizemore family has been comforted by the hundreds of messages of support and love shown to their son, brother and father,” Lago added. “They are asking for privacy during this difficult time and I am asking for those wishes to please be respected.”

There will be a private cremation service for the family with a larger celebration of life event planned in a few weeks.

News of Sizemore’s death comes after Lago revealed Monday that his medical care was at a critical turning point.

“Today, doctors informed his family that there is no further hope and have recommended end-of-life decision,” Lago said in a statement received by The Post. He added that Sizemore’s family was “deciding end-of-life matters.”

The star fought for his life in the intensive care unit at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, after an unidentified person found Sizemore unconscious and called 911. He remained in coma until his death.

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‘Tom was one of the most sincere, kind and generous human beings I have had the the pleasure of knowing. His courage and determination through adversity was always an inspiration to me. The past couple of years were great for him and he was getting his life back to a great place.’

Charles Lago, Sizemore’s manager of 15 years.

Born on Nov. 29, 1961, in Detroit, Sizemore attended Wayne State University and received his master’s degree in theater from Temple University in 1986.

One of his first acting credits was playing a veteran in Oliver Stone’s “Born on the Fourth of July,” released in 1989. He subsequently starred in several other projects, including “Lock Up,” “Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man,” “Point Break,” “True Romance,” “Natural Born Killers” and “Strange Days.”

Sizemore’s career-defining role came in the 1998 blockbuster “Saving Private Ryan,” in which he played Sgt. Mike Horvath.

“I had a wonderful time working with Tom Hanks — we were sort of ‘good Tom’ and ‘bad Tom,’ and you can guess who was which,” Sizemore wrote of “Saving Private Ryan” in his 2013 memoir, “By Some Miracle I Made It Out of There.”

“My character’s real purpose in the movie was to keep Hanks’s character alive and make sure that the other men didn’t see that he was falling apart. At the end of the shoot, Tom wrote me a beautiful note about how he’d never forget making the movie with me.”

“Saving Private Ryan” went on to win five Oscars, including best director for Steven Spielberg.

Sizemore’s other notable films include “Pearl Harbor” and “Heat.” He also appeared in six episodes of the TV series “Twin Peaks” in 2017, and he voiced Sonny Forelli in the 2002 video game “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.”

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One of his last films was “The Legend of Jack and Diane” in 2022. He is attached to projects due out in 2023 and 2024 as well.

The embattled actor publicly struggled with cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine addictions and ran into legal trouble for drug possession and domestic abuse. He appeared on “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew” in 2010.

While promoting his memoir, Sizemore claimed his “Heat” co-star Robert DeNiro urged him to attend rehab after they wrapped filming the 1995 movie.

“I walked in to see my shrink, and I walked in, and there were all these people there … and I sit down and Bob came in and goes, ‘OK. OK, now we can talk … Now you listen to me, I’m no psychiatrist … but you’re either going to go to rehab or go to prison and in walks a cop,'” Sizemore told Access Hollywood about his family-led intervention.

“I was trying to make a joke out of it because all these people are there and I’m embarrassed, and he went, ‘Tom, I’m not playing. They’ll put you in jail for a year,'” he added.

“I did the last scene of ‘Heat’ and I was supposed to go to rehab right then, but I had my assistant drive my car … and I dove into the back seat of a moving vehicle with my prosthetics on and I drove to the Loews Hotel and I checked in under the name Amiel Gooch, and Bob [DeNiro] finally tracked me down over there, and when I knew he was closing in on me, I hung off the balcony,” Sizemore explained.

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Sizemore was married to “The Bold and the Beautiful” actress Maeve Quinlan from 1996 until 1999. Quinlan called the police after a violent argument at their home in 1997. She later dropped the charges, chalking the incident up to a “huge misunderstanding.”

Sizemore’s abusive reputation persisted. In 2003, he was convicted of domestic violence against his then-girlfriend, Heidi Fleiss. “The Hollywood Madam” had nothing but negative things to say about her former beau in a 2017 interview with USA Today.

“He would bring home these weird things. They were so degrading,” Fleiss told the outlet of Sizemore’s alleged porn preferences.

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“No one will have more disgusting stories in Hollywood than him,” she added. “I have dealt with a lot of people doing a lot of different things. It’s different with Tom. He’s a whole other level.”

Sizemore dated Janelle McIntire from 2003 until 2006. McIntire gave birth to the couple’s twin boys, Jagger and Jayden Sizemore, in July 2005.

Months later, a sex tape called “The Tom Sizemore Sex Scandal” was released, allegedly capturing the actor engaging in hard-core scenes with up to three women at a time, distributor Vivid Entertainment claimed at the time. Sizemore reportedly alleged in the video that he hooked up with Paris Hilton, which she denied.

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Sizemore pleaded no contest in 2006 to using methamphetamine outside a California motel and was sentenced to 36 months of probation.

In 2009, he was arrested twice in LA for suspected battery of a former spouse and for allegedly transporting or selling a controlled substance, according to the Los Angeles Times.

He again pleaded no contest to two domestic violence charges for assaulting his girlfriend — a deal that made him avoid more jail time — in February 2017.

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That November, former child actress Kiersten Pyke alleged to the Hollywood Reporter that Sizemore had molested her on the set of “Natural Born Killers” in 2003 when she was just 11 years old. He was kicked off the set for a brief time due to the accusation but was allowed back to complete the project.

The actress filed a lawsuit against Sizemore in May 2018 seeking $3 million, claiming his alleged abuse caused longstanding emotional problems. His publicist denied the allegation, and a Utah judge dismissed the lawsuit in August 2020.

“Beyond the loss of work and the pain and humiliation this has caused me and my family, the thought that an 11-year-old girl would think I violated her, whether it be because she misconstrued some inadvertent touching when the director placed her upon my lap for the photo shoot or someone else instilled this idea in her head for whatever malicious, self-serving reasons, is what devastates me most,” Sizemore said, in part, in a statement to USA Today.

According to his IMDb profile, Sizemore was still linked to dozens of projects in production or post-production this year.

His final completed works include an episode on the upcoming sixth season of the television series “Cobra Kai” and the 2023 disaster flick “Bermuda Island.”