James Caan, who built a durable film career in varied roles across six decades but was forever identified most closely with one of his earliest characters, the quick-tempered, skirt-chasing Sonny Corleone in the original Godfather movie, died on Wednesday. He was 82.

His death was announced by his family on Twitter. The announcement did not say where he died or cite a cause.

By the time The Godfather was released in 1972, Caan had established himself as a young actor worth keeping an eye on. He had a meaty role in El Dorado, a 1966 western that starred John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. (Wayne, Caan said, cheated at chess games during breaks in the filming.)

In The Rain People, a 1969 movie that was his first collaboration with the director Francis Ford Coppola, he earned critical praise playing a simple-minded former football player.

Brian’s Song (1971), an early made-for-television movie, brought him to the attention of a wider audience. Based on a true story, it focused on the friendship between a black football star, Gale Sayers of the Chicago Bears, and a white teammate, Brian Piccolo. Piccolo died of cancer in 1970 at 26, and Caan played him with verve and humour in an unabashedly three-hanky film.

Then came Coppola’s Godfather. Initially cast as the central figure, Michael Corleone — the role ultimately played by Al Pacino — Caan ended up playing Sonny, quick to anger and ultimately gunned down on a causeway.

Caan was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor for his portrayal of the hot-tempered Corleone.

He threw himself into the role so fully that for years, he said, strangers would say to him things like, “Hey, don’t go through that tollbooth again.”

New York Times News Service and Reuters