Burt Young, Oscar-Nominated ‘Rocky’ Star, Dead at 83

Young played Rocky Balboa's brother-in-law in the first six 'Rocky' movies opposite Sylvester Stallone

Burt Young, the Oscar-nominated actor who played Rocky Balboa’s brother-in-law Paulie in the Rocky movies with Sylvester Stallone, has died, his manager confirmed to PEOPLE. He was 83.

“Burt was an actor of tremendous emotional range. He could make you cry and he could scare you to death,” Young's manager, Lynda Bensky, said in a statement to PEOPLE. “But the real pathos that I experienced was the poignancy of his soul.  That’s where it came from.”

Young died on Oct. 8 in Los Angeles, his daughter, Anne Morea Steingieser, told the New York Times, which first reported his death Wednesday.

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Young, who adopted the name Burt Young when he began acting, starred in over 160 movies and television shows. During his prolific career, he became a reliable character actor who could play tough guys in mobs or working men just trying to make it.

One of those working men characters was Paulie, Rocky Balboa’s best friend and the brother of his wife Adrian. Young’s performance in the first Rocky movie earned him an Oscar nomination and he would go on to reprise the role in every Rocky movie through Rocky Balboa in 2006.

In 2009, Young told The Sweet Science he was the only actor cast in Rocky who didn’t have to audition. Stallone saw him on the MGM lot and told the former U.S. Marine that he had to be in the movie, Young recalled.

“I thought the script had the cleanest street prose I’d ever read,” Young said of Stallone’s Oscar-nominated script in 2009. “Stallone is not only a workaholic, he’s a genius who is always looking three years ahead. He has a real eyeball for what’s going on in the world.”

The actor, who was also briefly a professional boxer before he studied acting under Lee Strasberg, started his film and television career in 1969. Before Rocky, he starred alongside James Caan in Cinderella Liberty, The Gambler and The Killer Elite. Outside of the Rocky movies, Young also starred in Once Upon a Time in America and episodes of M*A*S*H, Beretta, Miami Vice, Columbo, The Sopranos and Russian Doll.

“For different reasons there are different movies that I like,” Young told Media Mikes in 2011 when asked about his favorite movie to make. “Location is always a factor as well as the individuals involved. The creativity of the script is important along with the depth of the character and how far I am allowed to take that character. I really liked some of the work that I have written. I of course love the first Rocky film. I also enjoyed some of the episodes from way back of Baretta that won Emmys and helped get that show renewed.”

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Outside of acting, Young had a passion for painting that developed when he was 11 and won a New York City Parks contest, he told the Long Island Pulse in 2012. He found painting to be liberating since there was no censorship compared to movies.

“With so many movies, my work ends up on the cutting room floor—every actor has that,” he said in 2012. “With my paintings, what are they going to do?”

Young is survived by his daughter, a brother, and a grandson, reports the Times. His wife Gloria died in 1974.

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