Your trusted source

US actor Tom Sizemore, known for roles in Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down, has died at 61, his manager says.

Sizemore found fame in the 1990s, often playing supporting roles as tough guys - usually military, police or criminal. His other credits included Natural Born Killers, Pearl Harbor and Heat, BBC News reported.

But he also had drug problems and served jail time for domestic violence.

Sizemore had been in a coma since suffering a ruptured brain aneurysm on 18 February.

His manager, Charles Lago, said he died on Friday at a hospital in Burbank, California, with his brother Paul and twin boys Jayden and Jagger, 17, at his side.

"The Sizemore family has been comforted by the hundreds of messages of support," Lago said.

He said Sizemore's sons were devastated, and asked that their privacy be respected.

Born in a working class area of Detroit, Sizemore obtained a masters degree in theatre before his Hollywood break arrived with a bit part in Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July in 1989.

That work led to bigger roles in 1990s dramas such as Tony Scott's True Romance, Devil in a Blue Dress, opposite Denzel Washington, and the biopic Wyatt Earp, alongside Kevin Costner.

Stone cast him again in the controversial Natural Born Killers as the violent Detective Jack Scagnetti; and he played a henchman to Robert De Niro's criminal in Heat.

In the Oscar-winning film Saving Private Ryan in 1998, he was at Tom Hanks' side as the loyal Sergeant Horvath.

Sizemore was nominated for a Golden Globe for playing a mobster in the 1999 TV movie Witness Protection, and provided the voice of mafia boss Sonny Forelli in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City in 2002.