Nick Cordero, a Tony Award-nominated actor who starred in such Broadway hits as “Rock of Ages,” “Waitress” and “A Bronx Tale: A Musical,” has died due to complications from coronavirus. He was 41.
“God has another angel in heaven now. My darling husband passed away this morning. He was surrounded in love by his family, singing and praying as he gently left this earth,” his wife, Amanda Kloots, wrote in an Instagram post Sunday night.
“I am in disbelief and hurting everywhere. My heart is broken as I cannot imagine our lives without him. Nick was such a bright light. He was everyone’s friend, loved to listen, help and especially talk. He was an incredible actor and musician. He loved his family and loved being a father and husband. Elvis and I will miss him in everything we do, everyday.”
After thanking Cordero’s “extraordinary” doctor, Kloots expressed gratitude for the outpouring of love from friends and fans, and signed off with a sweet message for her husband.
“You have no idea how much you lifted my spirits at 3pm everyday as the world sang Nicks song, Live Your Life,” she wrote. “We sang it to him today, holding his hands. As I sang the last line to him, ‘they’ll give you hell but don’t you light them kill your light not without a fight. Live your life,’ I smiled because he definitely put up a fight. I will love you forever and always my sweet man.”
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Cordero, who earned a Tony nomination in 2004 for playing a mob enforcer in the musical “Bullets Over Broadway,” had been hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for over three months after showing symptoms of COVID-19.
Kloots said in an Instagram story that one of Cordero’s legs had to be amputated after a life support machine and blood thinners caused complications with the limb. He was later given a temporary pacemaker to keep his heart rate steady. This past Thursday, she told “CBS This Morning’s” Gayle King that their “ultimate, ultimate goal” was that he would be a candidate for a double lung transplant.
There is a “99% chance that he would be needing that in order to live the kind of life that I know my husband would want to live,” Kloots said. “That is a long road away and a lot of things would have to line up in order for Nick to be a candidate for that.”
Kloots had given frequent updates during the 95 days her husband had been in the intensive care unite at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She said early on that doctors saw “some success” from repositioning Cordero and after undergoing a tracheostomy, but she was also told several times by doctors that he “won’t make it.”
“I’ve been told a couple times that he won’t make it. I’ve been told to say goodbye. I’ve been told it would take a miracle,” Kloots emotionally wrote in an Instagram post on June 3. “Well, I have faith. Faith that is small as a mustard seed sometimes, but that is all you need sometimes.”
Cordero made his Broadway debut in 2012 in the long-running musical hit “Rock of Ages” before earning a Tony nomination in 2014 for the short-lived musical based on Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway” in the role of an arts-loving gangster played by Chazz Palminteri on film.
After portraying an abusive husband in the Sara Bareilles-scored musical “Waitress,” Cordero took on another role originated by Palminteri on film, the hero of Palminteri’s “A Bronx Tale: The Musical,” which opened in 2016 and ran for 20 months.
In addition to his work on stage, Cordero had small roles in films like Zach Braff’s 2017 comedy remake “Going in Style” and on shows like “Blue Bloods” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”