Edward P. Lozzi, a longtime Hollywood publicist, has died. He was 77 years of age.

After a 49-year PR career, Lozzi passed away on April 22, 2026 after a brief illness, according to publicist and longtime friend Roger Neal. “Ed was a great publicist, we worked on projects together off and on over these past 45 years. He was my oldest friend in Hollywood,” Neal said in a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.

Lozzi ran his own Beverly Hills boutique PR firm, Edward Lozzi & Associates, and represented stars like Jon Voight, Milton Berle, Larry Hagman, Debbie Reynolds Lou Ferrigno, Shirley Jones, Rudy Valle, Melvin Beli and Lana Clarkson over 25 years before she was murdered in 2003 by record producer Phil Spector.

In 2013, Lozzi stood outside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to protest a screening of the HBO film Phil Spector and claimed the project implied Clarkson had committed suicide.“ To see that this film was going to be made was a slap in the face,” Lozzi told THR at the time. “We were so happy Phil Spector was in prison.”

Lozzi was also a political consultant and worked in press advance during the Bush 41 presidency out of Los Angeles. He was born in Hawthorne, New Jersey to young Big Band musician Virgil Lozzi and Elizabeth Ann Rhodes, daughter of the New Jersey newspaper owner Raymond Lincoln Rhodes.

Lozzi attended the Delbarton School for Boys and DePaul High School before being recruited to the University of Tennessee’s NCAA Football team, where he majored in business administration. In 1967, Lozzi joined the USAF Reserve Officer Training Flight School at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and was selected for Special Ops. training program during the Vietnam War.

In 1972, Lozzi began work as an underwriter at the Hartford Insurance Company in New York City, and a year later joined the Rhodes Agency insurance brokers in New Jersey, a family-owned business. In 1981, Lozzi left the insurance business in his native Hawthorne to found and run Edward Lozzi & Associates in Los Angeles after an internship at Rogers & Cowan Public Relations.

His corporate clients included legendary attorney Melvin Belli, where he handled communications for landmark legal rulings in the early Big Tobacco litigations, the DuPont silicone breast implant cases and the Norplant Birth control class action suits, among others.

In 1995, during the O.J. Simpson murder trial in Los Angeles, Lozzi was retained by Al Cowlings, the driver of the infamous white Ford Bronco slow police chase seen live on worldwide TV and arranged a highly viewed press conference by Simpson’s longtime friend.

In 2011, Lozzi and his boutique PR firm received the Certificate of Commendation from the City of Los Angeles at a special event where Fifth District City Council-member Paul Koretz saluted him for his “outstanding contributions to society and accomplishments in the entertainment industry…through your steadfast ways and caring deeds, you have helped to further the common goal of making our City a better place in which to live”.

Lozzi is survived by a brother, Marco Lozzi Nead; sisters Rae Ann Bender and Robyn Lozzi; a son, Brandon Bonsor; and his mother, who is 100 years old. Memorial plans have not been announced.