American actor and singer best known for his role as Carlo Rizzi in the 1972 film The Godfather. After reprising the Rizzi character in a brief flashback scene at the end of The Godfather Part II, Russo went on to act in more than 35 movies, including Goodnight, My Love (1972), Lepke (1975, as Albert Anastasia), Laserblast (1978), Chances Are (1989), The Freshman (1990), Side Out (1990), Another You (1991), Super Mario Bros. (1993), Any Given Sunday (1999) and Seabiscuit (2003).
Russo claims that he started a fledgling career in organized crime working as an errand boy and mob associate for Frank Costello as an adolescent but later abandoned the dangerous and volatile lifestyle of organized crime.
Russo claims he has owned a Las Vegas restaurant, dated Dionne Warwick for more than a decade, and successfully defeated 23 federal criminal indictments on a variety of charges stemming from alleged organized crime associations.
In 1988, Russo killed a man outside the Las Vegas club and casino he owned. When he tried to intervene to stop a member of the Medellín drug cartel from harassing a female patron, the man stabbed him with a broken wine bottle. Russo, a legal carry owner, pulled his gun and shot him twice in the head. Russo was not charged with the killing because it was ruled a justifiable homicide. However, when Pablo Escobar heard about the death, he ordered a contract on Russo’s life. The Columbian drug lord supposedly only cancelled it when he found out Russo had starred in one of his favourite films, The Godfather.
In 2019, he published his memoir, Hollywood Godfather: My Life in the Movies and the Mob. According to his memoir he was a friend and had a relationship with Marilyn Monroe.
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