John Cazale's Real Name: John Holland Cazale

Quick answer: John Cazale's documented full name is John Holland Cazale. Encyclopaedia Britannica records that name and gives his birth as August 12, 1935, in Revere, Massachusetts, and his death as March 13, 1978, in Manhattan, from cancer, at age 42. He appeared in five feature films, each nominated for the Academy Award for best picture (Britannica).

Real name and early life

The Library of Congress heading is "Cazale, John, 1936-1978." That heading, and the Illustrated Who's Who of the Cinema (1983) cited there, use 1936 and give Boston as a birthplace. Britannica instead dates the birth to August 12, 1935, in Revere, Massachusetts, and names his parents as John Joseph Cazale, a wholesale coal salesman, and Cecilia (née Holland) Cazale. This page records the conflict and, for the title, uses the full name Britannica documents. He was the middle of three children. He studied at Oberlin College and at Boston University (B.F.A., 1959), where his classmates included Olympia Dukakis. They were among the founding members of the Actors Company in a Boston loft, work that helped seed the Charles Playhouse. After graduating he moved to New York, appeared in regional and Off-Broadway productions, and supported himself as a cab driver, photographer, and messenger for Standard Oil, where he befriended fellow aspiring actor Al Pacino.

Career highlights

Cazale and Pacino were cast in Israel Horovitz's The Indian Wants the Bronx; Cazale won a 1968 Obie Award for distinguished performance, and another the same year for Horovitz's Line. During a 1971 revival of Line he came to the attention of a producer working with Francis Ford Coppola, who cast him as Fredo Corleone in The Godfather (1972), his feature debut, in a company that included Pacino and Diane Keaton. He returned as Fredo in The Godfather: Part II (1974) and also appeared in Coppola's The Conversation (1974), Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon (1975)—which brought a Golden Globe nomination—and Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978). Those five titles, Britannica notes, are the whole of his film career, and each was nominated for best picture. He and Meryl Streep later became engaged; this page mentions that relationship only as part of the documented late-1970s record, not as a tabloid narrative.

Death

Britannica records that Cazale died of cancer on March 13, 1978, in Manhattan, at age 42, and that The Deer Hunter was released nine months later.

Name notes for searchers

John Holland Cazale is the documented full name; he was known professionally as John Cazale. Searchers looking for Fredo in The Godfather or the actor who appeared in five consecutive best-picture nominees are usually aiming at the same person.