Fred Roos, the casting director turned producer who jump-started the profession of Jack Nicholson and collaborated typically with Francis Ford Coppola, sharing a finest image Oscar with the filmmaker for The Godfather: Half II, has died. He was 89.
Roos died Saturday at his residence in Beverly Hills, a publicist introduced.
It’s a part of Hollywood lore that earlier than Harrison Ford turned a well-known actor, he was laboring as a carpenter to make ends meet. What some may not know is that it was at Roos’ home the place Ford was woodworking when the casting director befriended him, finally pushing him for roles in George Lucas‘ American Graffiti (1973) and Star Wars (1977) and Coppola’s The Dialog (1974).
And it was Roos who satisfied Lucas — who had been leaning towards Amy Irving — that Carrie Fisher ought to painting Princess Leia in Star Wars. (Roos didn’t have an official position on that movie.)
Roos, nevertheless, was the casting director on The Godfather (1972), and he helped Coppola determine on Al Pacino and James Caan to play Michael and Sonny Corleone, respectively, after Paramount execs had wished different actors. (He mentioned he and Coppola “noticed each Italian-American actor in Hollywood and New York” as they forged their film.)
“There’s little question in my thoughts that Fred is among the nice casting skills within the final 40 years of American motion pictures,” Coppola mentioned in a 2004 interview with the Chicago Tribune. “He instructed and introduced me folks I might by no means have met, equivalent to the nice John Cazale.”
He additionally was instrumental in shaping the fledgling careers of Tom Cruise, Richard Dreyfuss, Diane Lane, Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez, Ralph Macchio and Suzanne Somers.
Roos was actively producing Coppola’s Megalopolis, which premiered in competitors at Cannes on Thursday.
A good friend of Nicholson’s for the reason that early Nineteen Sixties, Roos employed the actor to seem in Flight to Fury and Again Door to Hell, a pair of low-budget 1964 motion movies directed by Monte Hellman that Roos was producing back-to-back within the Philippines. He additionally employed Nicholson to co-write the screenplay for the previous.
The actor “was excessive on the plus aspect of fascinating,” Roos says in Patrick McGilligan’s 1996 ebook, Jack’s Life: A Biography of Jack Nicholson. “His face and look was something however what was happening [in the industry]. It was the period of the gorgeous guys. However he was extraordinarily likable, enjoyable to be with, sort of unpredictable, not like anybody else. He appeared very good in a avenue manner. I used to be from Southern California, and this high-energy, New Jersey avenue factor was very alien to me. So I used to be fascinated by that facet.”
Because the casting director on Bob Rafelson’s 5 Straightforward Items (1970), Roos received Nicholson on the way in which to his first Oscar nomination in the perfect actor class. He put musicians James Taylor and Kris Kristofferson in main roles in Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) and Cisco Pike (1972), respectively, and forged Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges within the John Huston boxing drama Fats Metropolis (1972).
Coppola valued Roos a lot, he made him a accomplice, itemizing him as co-producer on The Dialog. The next 12 months, Roos shared the perfect image Oscar with Coppola and Grey Frederickson for The Godfather: Half II (1974), the primary sequel to be named finest image. Roos acquired one other Academy Award nom as a producer on Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979).
When Sofia Coppola launched her filmmaking profession, it was solely pure that Roos lend his experience — through the making of The Godfather, he baby-sat her to provide her dad and mom, Francis and Eleanor, an evening out. Roos was a producer on all of the movies she directed.
He introduced then-unknown Josh Hartnett to Coppola’s consideration for The Virgin Suicides (1999), her directorial debut, and urged her to contemplate Anna Faris for the position of the crazy starlet in Misplaced in Translation (2003). Roos headed the search that led to Emma Watson, Katie Chang, Claire Julien and Israel Broussard starring in The Bling Ring (2013) and really helpful Colin Farrell for Coppola’s 2017 remake of The Beguiled.
Because the filmmaker instructed The Hollywood Reporter‘s Rebecca Ford in 2017: “The soldier needed to be actually masculine and a distinction to those delicate Southern women. And I simply met completely different actors, and Fred Roos, my nice marketing consultant, instructed Colin. I had met him earlier than however hadn’t considered him for this.”
Frederick Ried Roos was born in Santa Monica on Could 22, 1934. He graduated from Hollywood Excessive in 1952, then joined the navy and fought through the Korean Struggle.
After incomes his bachelor’s diploma from UCLA, Roos landed a job within the mailroom on the expertise company MCA. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than he was promoted to a junior agent. One in every of his purchasers was actress Pilar Seurat, who was married to Nicholson’s writing accomplice, Don Devlin.
Looking for to get extra into manufacturing, Roos exited MCA and signed with Hollywood veteran Robert L. Lippert as a narrative editor and casting director. Lippert ran one of many final studio “B” items, overseeing such low-budget fare as The Fly (1958), Need within the Mud (1960) and The Final Man on Earth (1964).
Roos received Nicholson a small half in Lippert’s Western The Damaged Land (1962), then had Nicholson and Devlin pitch Lippert on an concept for a low-budget actioner set in Central America. That turned Thunder Island (1963), with the pair receiving $1,250 for his or her screenplay.
In 1964, the producer despatched Roos to the Philippines to test on two movies in manufacturing starring Jock Mahoney. He remembered seeing a World Struggle II script across the workplace known as Again Door to Hell and realized it might work in that locale. He additionally had his personal story concept: Flight to Fury, a couple of diamond heist gone awry. He pitched each motion pictures to Lippert, and the producer gave his younger worker the inexperienced mild to provide them for $80,000 every.
Roos had seen Nicholson in The Terror (1963) and admired the moody, atmospheric manner through which it was shot; he thought perhaps one in every of its administrators, Coppola or Hellman, could be fascinated with doing his two movies. On the time, Nicholson and Hellman had been a writing crew, in order that they had been those who got here on board.
Roos segued to tv, serving as casting director on Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.; I Spy; The Andy Griffith Present; That Lady; and My World and Welcome to It. He started dabbling in big-screen casting with the 1968 releases Maryjane, starring Fabian and Diane McBain, and Petulia, with Julie Christie and George C. Scott.
Roos went on to provide Coppola’s One From the Coronary heart (1982), Rumble Fish (1983), The Outsiders (1983), The Cotton Membership (1984), Gardens of Stone (1987), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), The Godfather: Half III (1990), Youth With out Youth (2007), Tetro (2009), Twixt (2011) and Distant Imaginative and prescient (2018) and was listed as a casting govt on Jack (1996) and The Rainmaker (1997).
He additionally was an govt producer on Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, the Emmy-winning 1991 documentary in regards to the making of Apocalypse Now that Coppola’s spouse, Eleanor, co-directed. And he put collectively the financing for her directing debut — the romantic comedy Paris Can Wait (2016), starring Diane Lane and Alec Baldwin — when she was 81.
Via Francis’ Zoetrope Studios and its later incarnation, American Zoetrope, Roos additionally produced options directed by Carroll Ballard (1979’s The Black Stallion), Wim Wenders (1982’s Hammett), Barbet Schroeder (1987’s Barfly) and Agnieszka Holland (1993’s The Secret Backyard).
Roos saved busy into his 80s, producing such movies as St. Vincent (2014), The Congressman (2016), Wonderwell (2018) and Lady Who Fell From the Sky (2018).
Survivors embrace his spouse and longtime accomplice, Nancy Drew, and his son and producing accomplice, Alexander “Sandy” Roos.