James Caan

A macho leading man whose off-screen woes recall the hotheaded antics of his seminal character from The Godfather, Caan seemed to have it all in the early '70s. After earning raves and an Emmy nomination as a dying football player in the 1971 TV-movie Brian's Song, he made a splash on the big screen the next year in The Godfather and earned an Oscar nod. A string of mostly disappointing features followed (Funny Girl, Gone with the West, Hide in Plain Sight, which he also directed) before Caan suddenly exited the Hollywood scene in 1982. For five years he was MIA, and although rumors about his absence abounded, no one ever figured out the entire story. He returned to the big screen in the Vietnam drama Gardens of Stone (helmed by Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola) and continued to work steadily in projects of varying quality, sometimes parodying his gangster persona (Honeymoon in Vegas, Mickey Blue Eyes). During the '90s trouble seemed to follow wherever Caan went. He was linked to Heidi Fleiss, accused of assault, flashed a gun in public, and did a stint in rehab. But he grew wiser — and calmer — with age, and by the new millennium he seemed to have put his tabloid days behind him. In 2003, after four decades in showbiz, he took a gamble on series television and hit the jackpot on the popular drama Las Vegas. He left the show after its fourth season, reportedly to pursue big-screen work.