Career
Kirby was a popular character actor through the late 1980s and early 1990s. His film debut was in 1971's The Young Graduates. It was his role in The Godfather Part II, as the young Pete Clemenza, that raised his profile in Hollywood. Richard Castellano had appeared in The Godfather (1972) as hefty Pete Clemenza, a prominent member of the Corleone crime family, and Kirby subsequently played a younger version of Clemenza in The Godfather Part II. Coincidentally, Kirby portrayed Castellano's son in The Super, in one of his early television appearances.
Other television appearances include Room 222, and the pilot episode of M*A*S*H, playing the character Boone (he has no lines). He also appeared in the 1974 Columbo episode "By Dawn's Early Light" alongside father Bruce Kirby.
Described by film critic Leonard Maltin as "the quintessential New Yorker or cranky straight man", Kirby displayed his talents in a series of comedies, typically playing fast-talking, belligerent, yet strangely likeable characters. His best-known roles include a colleague of Albert Brooks' film editor in Modern Romance, a talkative limo driver in This Is Spinal Tap, the jealous, comedically-impaired U.S. Army officer Lt. Hauk in Good Morning, Vietnam and a shifty assistant to Marlon Brando — a parody of his Godfather role — in The Freshman. Kirby balanced comedies with dramatic roles such as that in Donnie Brasco as a double dealing mobster.
Kirby and comedian Billy Crystal made a popular screen team in When Harry Met Sally... (1989) and City Slickers (1991). Both featured Kirby's character as the opinionated best friend to Crystal's character. However, Kirby refused to sign on for the sequel City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold unless script changes were made, and was subsequently replaced by Jon Lovitz.
In 1991, Kirby made his Broadway debut when he replaced Kevin Spacey in Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers. In the last decade of his life, Kirby had success in the animated film Stuart Little, and was increasingly working on television. He starred as Barry Scheck in a 2000 CBS drama American Tragedy, played a paroled convict in a season three episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, and also directed an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street.
Read more about this topic: Bruno Kirby
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