The story of how Robert De Niro helped to save Tom Sizemore's ...

There is a bounty of actors across the history of Hollywood who consistently provide excellent performances, even if they don’t hog the limelight. Such is certainly true of the American actor Tom Sizemore, an icon of the silver screen whose characters precede his industry persona, making a name for himself in Steven Spielberg’s five-time Oscar-winning 1998 WWII epic Saving Private Ryan. 

Emerging to popularity at the dawn of the 1990s, Sizemore’s first role of significance came in Oliver Stone’s 1989 anti-war movie Born on the Fourth of July, where the actor would feature alongside Tom Cruise in an admittedly small supporting role. Still, this major appearance would provide a springboard for the actor to reach bigger and better roles, appearing in Kathryn Bigelow’s Blue Steel in 1990 and Tony Scott’s True Romance in 1993.

His rise to fame came with its own difficulties, however, with Sizemore struggling with significant drug addiction issues around the time of shooting Michael Mann’s Heat in 1995. Having been using and dealing drugs since the age of 15, Sizemore’s habit began to worsen after he found Hollywood fame. Thankfully for the actor, his Heat co-star Robert De Niro was pivotal in helping him seek help and straighten out his career. 

Sizemore discussed his experiences seeking specialist help in a 2016 memoir titled By Some Miracle I Made it Out of There, where he recalled: “I walked in to see my shrink and I walked in and there were all these people there…I sit down and Bob [De Niro] 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”. 

As frank with Sizemore as he is on screen, De Niro told the actor, “You’re going to die,” persuading him to go to rehab, as the Saving Private Ryan star recalls in his own words. A childhood hero of Sizemore’s, De Niro spoke honestly with the actor, driving him to his own private plane in order to take him to rehab. For Sizemore, it was a surreal experience as well as a “magical” one.

“I watched this guy in the dark when I was 14 and wondered who he was. And here he is,” the actor lovingly recalled, adding: “I’m in his car and he’s driving me to the airport, he’s telling me that the gig is up, he’s telling me I’m a wonderful actor, that he’s not gonna let me die. `I love you,’ he told me, like you’re my son…I didn’t wanna go. But I couldn’t say no to him”. 

Three years after De Niro’s intervention, shortly before the release of Saving Private Ryan, Sizemore had returned to a state of good health, owing his newfound vitality to the Hollywood icon. “I feel incredibly blessed,” he further explained: “I got out from underneath a boulder with that addiction. And that has made my life entirely different. Now I feel more like a man. I haven’t lost the wildness I used to put into heroin”. 

Sizemore wouldn’t have the chance to work with De Niro again, only working together on Michael Mann’s Heat, as well as the 1991 Irwin Winkler film Guilty by Suspicion, but he remains forever grateful for his compassion and selflessness.