AN ACTOR who specialised in cranky and uptight contemporary characters, Bruno Kirby rubbed shoulders with the likes of Brando, Pacino and, perhaps most memorably, Billy Crystal. He played Crystal’s best friend, and shared some great scenes with him, in the classic romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally . . . in 1989, and they were reunited a couple of years later as city dwellers who go on a cattle drive with a daunting Jack Palance in City Slickers.
He was born Bruno Giovanni Quidaciolu Jr into a showbiz family in New York in 1949. His father is Bruce Kirby, who also boasts a long career in character parts and played Matt Dillon’s difficult father in Crash (2004). His brother John Kirby is a distinguished acting coach, who worked on The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005).
Initially styling himself as Bruce Kirby Jr, Bruno made his film debut in the drama The Young Graduates in 1971. The following year he was Private Boone in the pilot episode of M*A*S*H and he had a recurring role in another American TV series, The Super, playing the teenage son of single father Richard S. Castellano.
Castellano remains best known as the mobster Clemenza in The Godfather (1972), a role which Kirby himself reprised in The Godfather Part II (1974). He played Clemenza as a young man in the flashbacks in which Robert De Niro was Vito Corleone. Clemenza was Corleone’s well-dressed neighbour who leads him into a life of crime when he gives him a “present” of an expensive rug that they have to remove from the home of a supposed friend.
The film emulated the critical and commercial success of the original and significantly raised Kirby’s profile among producers. It also helped to push his name up the credits and he co-starred with John Heard and Jeff Goldblum in Between the Lines (1977) and with Bill Murray, who played the gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, in Where the Buffalo Roam (1980).
Advertisement
He had a particularly memorable role as the chauffeur Tommy Pischedda, totally at odds with the rock band he drives, in the cult “mockumentary” This is Spinal Tap (1984). The character, who prefers Sinatra to heavy metal, was based on a personal friend and crystallised the resentment often felt between millionaire rock stars and their drivers. The film began Kirby’s association with Billy Crystal, who had a cameo role in the film.
During the 1980s Kirby went on to appear in Birdy, Flesh and Blood, with Jennifer Jason Leigh, with whom he was romantically linked, Tin Men, Good Morning, Vietnam, as Lieutenant Hauk, a man who thinks he is funny, but isn’t, and When Harry Met Sally . . ., in which he played Jess, Crystal’s best friend and sounding board for his ideas on personal relationships.
The smooth-faced Kirby could appear either goofy or menacing and took on comedy and drama with equal ease. He drew occasional comparisons with Joe Pesci, but was not usually as manic. He and Brando played on their Godfather personae in The Freshman (1990). Kirby played Brando’s nephew who lures an innocent student (Matthew Broderick) into a scam. It was a troubled shoot (as so many of Brando’s films were), but the double Oscar-winner was hugely impressed by Kirby, predicting that he “will steal the show out from under us all”.
Kirby was a caring coach in The Basketball Diaries (1995), with Leonardo DiCaprio, an abusive father in Sleepers (1996) and another mobster in Donnie Brasco (1997), with Al Pacino.
He was recently found to have leukaemia. He married two years ago and is survived by his wife, Lynn Sellers, who is an actress.
Advertisement
Bruno Kirby, actor, was born on April 28, 1949. He died of leukaemia on August 14, 2006, aged 57.