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<p>NEW YORK (AP) &#8212; Danny Aiello, the blue-collar character actor whose long career playing tough guys included roles in &#8220;Fort Apache, the Bronx,&#8221; &#8220;Moonstruck&#8221; and &#8220;Once Upon a Time in America&#8221; and his Oscar-nominated performance as a pizza man in Spike Lee&#8217;s &#8220;Do the Right Thing,&#8221; has died. He was 86.</p><p>Aiello died Thursday night after a brief illness, said his publicist, Tracey Miller, who runs Tracey Miller &amp; Associates. &#8220;The family asks for privacy at this time,&#8221; she said in a statement.</p><p>In a tweet, Cher mourned the man she called &#8220;a genius comedic actor.&#8221; The two had starred in &#8220;Moonstruck&#8221; and she called it &#8220;&#8221;one of the happiest times in my life.&#8221; Actor Michael Rapaport tweeted that Aiello was a &#8220;huge inspiration.&#8221;</p><p>Recognizable, if not famous, for his burly build and husky voice, he was an ex-union president who broke into acting in his 30s and remained a dependable player for decades, whether vicious or cuddly or some of each.</p><p>His breakthrough, ironically, was as the hapless lover dumped by Cher in Norman Jewison&#8217;s hit comedy &#8220;Moonstruck.&#8221; His disillusion contributed to the laughter, and although he wasn&#8217;t nominated for a supporting-role Oscar (Cher and Olympia Dukakis won in their categories), Aiello was inundated with movie offers.</p><p>&#8220;Living in New York City gave me training for any role,&#8221; he said in a 1997 interview. &#8220;I&#8217;ve seen people killed, knifed. I&#8217;ve got scars on my face. I have emotional recall when I work; the idea is simply to recreate it. I&#8217;ve seen it and experienced it. I&#8217;ve played gangsters, teachers but most of my work has been in the police area. And for that I&#8217;m adored by the police in New York City.&#8221;</p><p>The ebullient Aiello became a favorite of several directors, among them Woody Allen, who used him in the Broadway play &#8220;The Floating Light Globe&#8221; and the movies &#8220;Broadway Danny Rose,&#8221; &#8220;The Purple Rose of Cairo&#8221; and &#8220;Radio Days.&#8221;</p><p>Lee was another admirer and for &#8220;Do the Right Thing&#8221; cast Aiello as a pizzeria operator in a black neighborhood of Brooklyn, the movie climaxing with a riot that destroys his eatery. &#8220;This is my pizzeria!&#8221; he cried. Lee had first offered the role to Robert De Niro, but Aiello&#8217;s performance brought him an Oscar nomination for supporting actor.</p><p>Among his other movies: &#8220;Fort Apache, the Bronx&#8221; (as a cop who threw a boy from a building), &#8220;Once Upon a Time in America,&#8221; &#8220;Harlem Nights,&#8221; &#8220;Jack Ruby&#8221; (as Ruby) and&#8221;City Hall.&#8221; He also appeared in TV miniseries, including &#8220;The Last Don,&#8221; &#8220;A Woman Named Jackie&#8221; and in the 1985-86 police series &#8220;Lady Blue.&#8221;</p><p>A child of New York&#8217;s Hell&#8217;s Kitchen neighborhood, Aiello retained the pugnacity he learned on city streets.</p><p>&#8220;During the early times in my acting career, I would fight at the drop of a hat,&#8221; he said in 1985. &#8220;I was very hungry. If there were obstacles, I tried to remove them.&#8221; He added that sometimes he engaged in fistfights with actors after work because of incidents during filming or rehearsals.</p><p>Daniel Louis Aiello Jr. was born June 20, 1933, to Italian parents. His father, a laborer, left the family of seven children, and Daniel started working at age 9 selling newspapers, working in a grocery store and bowling alley, shining shoes and loading trucks. In his teenage years, he joined a street gang and, he claimed, engaged in burglary and safe-cracking. He dropped out of high school before graduating, got married in 1955 and joined the Army.</p><p>After three years in the service, he worked at several factory jobs, landing as a baggage man at Greyhound. The ambitious Aiello rose to become president of the transit union.</p><p>&#8220;I wanted to become a politician,&#8221; he told a reporter in 1995. &#8220;I always thought that I could talk, that people liked me, that I can represent them.&#8221; But when Greyhound accused him of starting a wildcat strike and the union leaders agreed, Aiello quit his job.</p><p>He worked at one job after another, and in 1970 was hired as a bouncer at the New York comedy club, Improvisation. One night, he was asked to act as an assistant emcee. &#8220;It was no big deal; it was just &#8216;Danny, go up and announce the acts,&#8217;&#8221; he recalled in 1997. &#8220;There was a little bantering between acts, and I kept that short. I was terrified.&#8221;</p><p>Yet Aiello soon branched out, playing small roles in the movies &#8220;Bang the Drum Slowly&#8221; and &#8220;The Godfather, Part II,&#8221; and as the bartender lead in a musical play &#8220;Lamppost Reunion.&#8221; Starting in 1980 he averaged three films a year, plus appearances in theater and television. Off-Broadway, he appeared in &#8220;The Shoemaker&#8221; in 2011.</p><p>Aiello and his wife of 65 years, Sandy, lived in Ramsey, New Jersey. He also is survived by three children and 10 grandchildren: Rick, Jamie and Stacy. A fourth son, stuntman and stunt coordinator Danny Aiello III, died in May 2010 of pancreatic cancer. </p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">In this July 28, 2001 photo, Danny Aiello poses for a photo at Gigino restaurant in New York. Aiello, the blue-collar character actor whose long career playing tough guys included roles in &#8220;Fort Apache, the Bronx,&#8221; &#8220;The Godfather, Part II,&#8221; &#8220;Once Upon a Time in America&#8221; and his Oscar-nominated performance as a pizza man in Spike Lee&#8217;s &#8220;Do the Right Thing,&#8221; has died. He was 86. Aiello died Thursday after a brief illness, said his publicist, Tracey Miller.  </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/web1_124148844-92efa9f34dbb4ec69e40408f54fb1cd4.jpg</photo0><caption0>In this July 28, 2001 photo, Danny Aiello poses for a photo at Gigino restaurant in New York. Aiello, the blue-collar character actor whose long career playing tough guys included roles in &#8220;Fort Apache, the Bronx,&#8221; &#8220;The Godfather, Part II,&#8221; &#8220;Once Upon a Time in America&#8221; and his Oscar-nominated performance as a pizza man in Spike Lee&#8217;s &#8220;Do the Right Thing,&#8221; has died. He was 86. Aiello died Thursday after a brief illness, said his publicist, Tracey Miller.  </caption0><photoCredit0>AP file photo </photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mark Kennedy</p><p>Associated Press</p></bylineMeta></div>

Actor Danny Aiello dies at 86