For a man who, in his earlier days, wanted to be a real-life gangster, Alex Rocco never quite seemed the type, but made a career out of playing bad guys and various other characters in a long and satisfying career. He died on Saturday at the age of 79.
Born Alexander Federico Petricone in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Rocco spent his youth in the tough Winter Hill district of Boston as a hanger-on with the local Winter Hill Gang. He ended up questioned as part of an investigation into the murder of a gang rival, was released without charge and left the Boston area shortly after that. He’d decided to move to Los Angeles and won his first film role working on Russ Meyer’s Motorpsycho! Several smaller parts followed, but he scored a big break playing Moe Greene on **The Godfather **for Francis Ford Coppola, which became the real bedrock of his career, and a role for which he would – to his delight – be forever recognised.
He played many bad guys and sleazy types, but also showed the ability to inhabit various roles on both movie and TV screens. He shows up in films such as The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,** The Stunt Man**, Herbie Goes Bananas, That Thing You Do!, Smokin’ Aces and Find Me Guilty.
He considers one of his most lucrative jobs to be voicing Thorny, one of the ant council in Pixar’s A Bug’s Life. “That was my greatest prize ever in life,” he said, “because I did about eight lines as an ant, and I think I made over a million dollars.” On TV he had an even wider range of characters, appearing on the likes of Episodes, Magic City, Party Down, Touched By An Angel, The Facts Of Life and, famously, as Roger Meyers Jr. on The Simpsons, the man behind the company that producers the Itchy & Scratchy cartoons.