There's definitely irony in the career of longtime supporting actor Abe Vigoda, but it's kind of hard to say where.
He was either a TV cop who was ironically cast in mob movies, or a mob-movie man who got to play at being one of the good guys on TV.

If you recognize the gaunt and lanky star, it's likely from his turns at playing the loyal mafia killer in the first two "Godfather" films from 1972 and 1974.

The films, considered undisputed classics today, were sensations even at the time, and so it's likely that he was already inextricably associated with his mobster persona when "Barney Miller" premiered in 1974. The series featured Vigoda as the aging and crotchety Det. Phil Fish, and he stuck with the show for the first three seasons, doing the third season part-time while also starring in his very own spinoff, aptly named "Fish." The spinoff itself lasted for two seasons, and the first season will be included with the "Barney Miller" DVD set that comes out on Oct. 25.

It wasn't just Francis Ford Coppola's legendary "Godfather" pictures that made Vigoda's bones in the mob business. Between them he also starred in the largely forgotten "The Don Is Dead" (1973), and he returned to the business after his jaunt on television. In 1994, he starred in a modern sort of mobster movie, playing a crime boss in the Wesley Snipes action flick "Sugar Hill," set in New York City's troubled Harlem neighborhood.

He doesn't seem to mind being typecast, though. At 90 years old, long after many might have retired from the biz and enjoyed the fruits of their "Godfather" royalty checks, he's still at it. He has three different mobster movies in various stages of completion -- "The Driver" opposite fellow gangster-film regular Vincent Pastore, "Mafioso II" and, showing a willingness to make fun of the whole thing, the indie-made genre spoof "Mobster Movie."

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