Alex Rocco, the Boston native whose role as Moe Greene in "The Godfather" is one of the most remembered in film history, had been a criminal in real life.Rocco, who died last week at 79, said in an interview with AVClub.com that as "a young kind, I did a little time in the Billerica House of Correction."Rocco was a bookie arrested three times and served the jail time for a brawl, the Boston Globe reported."I learned to bet the Red Sox, the Celtics, Suffolk Downs,” Rocco said in an interview with the Boston Herald. “I thought it was a glorious life."Rocco faced a murder charge in 1961 for the slaying of Charlestown crime figure Bernard McLaughlin, in which he was alleged to be the getaway driver.The grand jury declined to indict him.After his time in jail, he told AVClub.com that he decided then that he would “never be locked up again.”"It basically turned my life around, because I said, 'Oh, I’ll never be locked up again. They’re not taking away my privacy.' So I flipped a coin: heads Miami, tails California. I came out here in ’61, I believe, and never got so much as a ticket after that. Somebody was looking out for me, I’ll tell ya that."Rocco's career spanned five decades, but his most famous role came in 1972's "The Godfather."He played the humbled casino owner who meets his fate on a massage table, with a bullet through his thick eyeglass lenses. His confrontation with Al Pacino's Michael Corleone - in which he condescended to the new boss: "I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders!" - was among the movie's many indelible scenes.