Burt Young, ‘Rocky’ star, dead at 83
Burt Young, the actor best known for his Oscar-nominated performance as Sylvester Stallone’s sidekick in “Rocky,” has died.
He was 83.
His death was confirmed Wednesday to The Post by his manager Lynda Bensky.
“Burt was an actor of tremendous emotional range,” she wrote in a statement. “He could make you cry and he could scare you to death. But the real pathos that I experienced was the poignancy of his soul. That’s where it came from.”
Young’s breakout role as Paulie Pennino in “Rocky” — playing the titular boxer’s best friend and brother of his love interest — came as one of the movie’s more veteran actors at the time.
“I was the only actor that didn’t audition in the first ‘Rocky,’” he told The Rumpus in 2017. “And I got the most money for it.”
The 1976 part in the Stallone written film earned him an Oscar nomination for supporting actor — even if the New York Times shredded the rest of the movie.
“Burt Young is effective as Rocky’s best friend, a beer-guzzling mug,” the critique read.
“I made him a rough guy with a sensitivity,” Mr. Young later said of Paulie, a role he reprised five more times in the series, most recently in “Rocky Balboa” in 2006. “He’s really a marshmallow, even though he yells a lot.”
The character of Paulie died in 2012, keeping Young out of 2015’s “Creed,” but his importance to the franchise remains.
“To my Dear Friend, BURT YOUNG, you were an incredible man’s and artist, I and the World will miss you very much…RIP,” Stallone wrote in a tribute posted to Instagram.
Born in Queens in 1940, many of the facts surrounding Young’s youth have remained in dispute.
Young grew up in Corona before his father sent him outside the neighborhood for schooling to keep him off the streets — not that it helped.
At the age of 16, he enlisted in the Marines — “my pop fibbing my age to get me in,” he wrote in the foreword to “Corona: The Early Years,” (2015), by Jason D. Antos and Constantine E. Theodosiou — serving from 1957-59.
During that stint he became a boxer, going on to a brief professional career with an approximated 17-1 record, by his own varying accounts.
Even his last name is a matter of debate, as he began using Burt Young when he decided to become an actor, studying under Lee Strasberg for two years in his late 20s.
Young had over 160 film and television credits to his name, including “Chinatown” and “Once Upon a Time in America.”
