Later Life
In February 1998, LaMotta's elder son Jake LaMotta, Jr., died of liver cancer. In September 1998, his younger son Joseph LaMotta died in the crash of Swissair Flight 111 off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada.
His nephew, John LaMotta, fought in the heavyweight-novice class of the 2001 Golden Gloves championship tournament. His nephew, William Lustig, is a well-known director and producer of horror genre films and the President of Blue Underground, Inc.
As of 2007, LaMotta had been married six times and had four daughters, including Christi by his second wife Vikki and Stephanie by his fourth wife Dimitria.
He remains active on the speaking and autograph circuit, and has published several books about his career, his life, and his fights with Robinson.
He is a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame and was ranked 52nd on Ring Magazine's List of the 80 Best Fighters of the Last 80 Years. The magazine also ranked him as one of the 10 greatest middleweights of all time.
On the 2nd of June 2012 he was taken ill at a signing event in the UK, but was later discharged from hospital in a safe condition.
LaMotta appeared in a 50-minute New York stage production, "Lady and the Champ," in July 2012. The production focused on LaMotta's boxing career, and was criticized by The New York Times as poorly executed and a "bizarre debacle."
LaMotta is the subject of a forthcoming documentary, “Moving Forward, the Untold Story of Jake LaMotta,” and has planned to make a sequel to Raging Bull. MGM has filed suit to halt the project, saying that LaMotta does not have the right to make a sequel.
Read more about this topic: Jake LaMotta
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“There was a heavy power in her eyes which laid hold of his whole being, as if he had drunk some powerful drug. He had been feeling weak and done before. Now the life came back into him, he felt delivered from his own fretted, daily self.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)