Lenny Montana, who played Luca Brasi in "The Godfather" (1972), was an actual mafia enforcer sent by the Colombo family to oversee the filming. Coppola cast him, but Montana was too nervous about acting with Brando and kept forgetting his lines, which was later included as a character trait.

Image from external-preview.redd.it and submitted by MrGeek616
image showing Lenny Montana, who played Luca Brasi in "The Godfather" (1972), was an actual mafia enforcer sent by the Colombo family to oversee the filming. Coppola cast him, but Montana was too nervous about acting with Brando and kept forgetting his lines, which was later included as a character trait.

gmoney4897 on February 6th, 2020 at 00:14 UTC »

One of the best ancillary characters ever (though, it does help to read the book as Puzo gave a lot more background and detail about him)

Edit: I did not know this fact! So cool!!

Capital_8 on February 6th, 2020 at 00:37 UTC »

One of the greatest "found object" performances in film.

Captain-Hank on February 6th, 2020 at 00:46 UTC »

Why did the columbo family send an enforcer to the set of the godfather?