10 Mob Movie Actors Who Were Actually There

The history behind the making of The Godfather is arguably just as fascinating as the film itself, enough that its production inspired a somewhat middling dramatisation on Paramount+ in 2023, called The Offer.

The production of The Godfather drew heavy interest from the mob through the Italian-American Civil Rights League, which was the political arm of the Colombo crime family. Then-current and former members of the mafia had a hand in multiple aspects of Francis Ford Coppola's film, whether that was Mario Puzo's script being adjusted to remove direct mentions of the word "mafia" and "Cosa Nostra", or even the castings themselves.

Alex Rocco was not one of those mafia-influenced castings, but the actor - born Alessandro Federico Petricone Jr., and who played Las Vegas heavyweight Moe Greene in Coppola's picture - did have a criminal past, racking up multiple arrests in his native Massachusets and drawing allegations for associating with the Winter Hill Gang, a predominantly Irish-American crime syndicate which operated out of Boston. It was alleged that Rocco was the getaway driver in the assassination of Bernie McLaughlin, a heavy in the rival Charlestown Mob who was gunned down in 1961, although the case against him was dismissed due to a lack of evidence.

After spending time in prison on a different charge, Rocco swapped Boston for the Golden State and started his acting career, which remained active until his death in 2015. Greene was almost certainly his most iconic role, however, with the character's death in Coppola's masterful baptism sequence a genre-defining image.