As the fifth of six children born into a New York family with Italian roots, Danny Aiello was - almost, of course - to be seen in a small role as a mafioso in "The Godfather 2". Acting at the time seemed to be one of many jobs that Aiello had in his life, previously he had been a bouncer and worked for the Greyhound bus company.
But during the 1970s, Aiello repeatedly gotten smaller appearances in movies and had his breakthrough to more prominent supporting roles in the Bronx -playing police movie "Fort Apache" in 1981 starring Paul Newman. In 1984 he starred in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, 1985 in Woody Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo, and in the music video for Madonna's Papa Do not Preach he played the father.
Reminiscent of Aiello's appearance in "Moonstruck" (1987), where he made a wedding proposal to the widow played by Cher on his knees. The decade ended with one of his strongest supporting roles: in Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" (1989), his pizza maker was Sal, "the typical cute racist next door who likes the blacks as far as he knows them personally" ("taz") , The role earned him an Oscar nomination in the Supporting Actor category.
One of his few starring roles was in 1992 in "Jack Ruby - The Web of the Mafia", when Aiello played the man who shot John F. Kennedy's killer. Otherwise, the odds in the 1990s were good that a not-so-slim middle-aged man would be played in Hollywood movies by Danny Aiello - sometimes, as in Robert Altman's "Prêt-à-Porter" (1994), in pink women's clothes. Or, as in "Hudson Hawk" (1991), also singing along with Bruce Willis.
In "City Hall" he played so impressively the corrupt Brooklyn politician Frank Anselmo that Rudolph Giuliani quoted him in a SPIEGEL conversation. A circle closed when Aiello in the three-part "The Last Godfather" after Mario Puzo 1996 gave the mafia boss.
Danny Aiello died on Thursday night in New Jersey, as reported by several US media agencies referring to him. He was 86 years old.
