Even if you don't know his name, chances are you know one iconic role played by John Matuszak...
"Sloth!"
No matter how tragic Sloth's life was at the hands of the Fratelli family, though, it doesn't
come close to the wild ups and downs of John Matuszak's real life.
Beneath the prosthetics, Matuszak spent years struggling with drugs and wildly reckless
behavior that led to his untimely death at the age of 38.
Here's Sloth's tragic real-life story.
Drugs, booze, and football
Before he ever set foot in front of a camera, John Matuszak was known first and foremost
as a football player.
The Houston Oilers made Matusak the number one overall draft pick in 1973 - and rightfully
so.
He measured in at 6 foot 8 and 280 pounds!
In fact, the only thing in the locker room bigger than Matuszak was his drug habit.
In 1970s slang, football players with a heavy amphetamine habit were called "747s" because
of how high they were "flying."
Matuszak, well, they jokingly called him "John Glenn."
As in the astronaut.
But the drugs couldn't keep The Tooz floating forever.
He was let go by the Houston Oilers, then dropped from the Kansas City Chiefs after
coach Paul Wiggin found him unconscious from an overdose of whiskey and pills.
He then wound up on the Washington Redskins, but coach George Allen gave him the boot over
concerns of his diet of "vodka and Valium.
"One for me.
That's the breakfast of champions there."
Rings and handcuffs
After the Redskins, Matuszak wound up with the Oakland Raiders.
The joke at the time was that "You didn't have to be a convicted felon to play for the
Raiders, but it helped," and Matuszak fit right in with the infamous beefed-up leatherheads
of the late '70s Raiders.
He was a key player in two Super Bowl wins for the team, first in 1977, and then in 1981,
but even that kind of success didn't stop his drug-fueled antics, like the time he was
arrested for driving drunk and firing a gun at street signs.
A few nights before his second Super Bowl win, he earned a $1000 fine for partying,
but considering the team as a whole racked up a legendary $15,000 in fines before that
Super Bowl win, it isn't hard to argue that he had certainly found a home for himself,
of sorts, on that team.
World's Strongest Man
During some off-season time, Matuszak entered the 1978 World's Strongest Man competition
because he was bored.
Like you do.
By then, he had beefed up to 315 lbs, and while he didn't win it all, he did place 9th.
That's already pretty impressive, but even more so because, according to his Oakland
Raiders teammates, he never actually trained specifically for the contest — he just used
his natural brawn to do things like bend an iron bar around his neck.
That's pretty intense.
Image problems
After retiring from football, Matuszak opened up to discuss more intimate parts of himself
to try to separate himself from the persona he created as an utterly terrifying defensive
lineman.
In interviews gathered by UPI in 1982, he discussed the differences between his monstrous
public persona and the man he actually was in his personal life.
He played Santa Claus and taught football to kids at summer camp.
He regularly visited his sister in the hospital when she was struggling with cystic fibrosis
(which two of his brothers died from).
Few of those stories made the press, however.
People just wanted to hear about him getting drunk and rowdy.
It was the legacy he lived with.
Painkillers
Being a maniac on field makes some good press and intimidates the competition, but it's
disastrous on the human body.
After retirement, Matuszak struggled with physical pain that led to a full-blown painkiller
addiction after his football career.
He would struggle with that addiction for the half-dozen or so years he lived post-retirement.
In all likelihood, his short but intense football career ate him alive.
Acting heavyweight
Considering his short acting career, Matuszak appeared in a lot of films that either did
well at the time or developed cult status.
He starred in North Dallas Forty, which is still considered one of the best football
movies ever made.
He of course has The Goonies under his belt, a film where he was genuinely loved by everyone
involved.
He also appeared in Ringo Starr's film Caveman and had a part in the cult classic sci-fi
comedy Ice Pirates.
One of his longest recurring roles was on Aaron Spelling's short-lived Hollywood Beat,
where he played a gay bar manager called George Grinsky.
Playing a gay character with sensitivity in the Reagan years was a pretty gutsy move,
and critics at the time skewered him for it, saying he was the "latest casualty of [a]
sensitivity epidemic."
It really seems like nobody at the time would just let him try to succeed in anything that
didn't involve him brutalizing people.
Traffic assault
Even in the midst of the most success he'd ever experienced, Matuszak struggled with
a crisis of identity.
Also, drugs.
He was still on a lot of drugs.
A couple of years before he died, Matuszak got in a car wreck and punched the other driver
unconscious before fleeing the scene.
Considering the work he was involved with at the time was the action flick One Man Force
and the cop drama Miami Vice, you have to wonder if there was some overlap between reality
and fantasy at that point.
He was delving back into his reckless ways even as he was finally being recognized for
the talented, sensitive man he wanted to show the world.
"Sloth love Chunk"
A tragic end
Throughout his life, John Matuszak never hesitated to dive headfirst into any challenge.
But he appeared to have his life under control in the late '80s, when he wrote in his 1987
autobiography, Cruisin' With the Tooz: ”I abstain from cocaine, and any other foreign
substance, entirely now.
I take nothing, not even sleeping pills.
I've hit damn near bottom.
I don't ever want to go back.”
Nevertheless, Matuszak passed away in 1989 at the far-too-early age of 38 from an accidental
overdose of Darvon, a prescription painkiller.
Part of what contributed to his death was an enlarged heart, too big for even his giant
body.
It was the heart so many people came to love.
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