Mark Margolis, the actor who played vengeful drug lord Hector Salamanca in ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Better Call Saul’, has died. He died Thursday at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York at the age of 83 after a short illness, his son announced.
As The Hollywood Reporter reports, Margolis, who was a personal assistant to legendary acting coach Stella Adler, also starred as Bolivian henchman Alberto “La Sombra” in Brian De Palma’s “Scarface.”
Margolis was born in Philadelphia in 1939. Early in her career she focused on the theater, performing in dozens of Off-Broadway shows and founding Blue Dome, a traveling theater company. subsequently, he played an aging math teacher for Darren Aronofsky in ‘Pi’ (1998), and then appeared in the filmmaker’s next five films.
In a 2012 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he was asked why he thought Aronofsky kept hiring him, he replied: “He thinks he has an obligation! I started him on his first movie, ‘Pi,’ when he was unknown. I chased him for three years. months because he kept lying to me about when I would get my money. I finally threatened to call his mom, who was working on the movie. Then he finally paid me.”
“I’m just a fledgling actor,” he once said. “Actually, six months after Scarface, I had to take a job with a real estate developer friend for a few months just to get by.” Margolis landed a recurring role from 1985 to 1989 as surveillance expert Jimmy on the CBS crime drama ‘The Equalizer,’ starring Edward Woodward.
Speaking no Spanish, Margolis made his first appearance as Hector “Tio” Salamanca in Vince Gilligan’s ‘Breaking Bad’ in March 2009. His character, a former thug for Mexican crime boss Don Eladio (Steven Bauer), is paralyzed. and can only communicate through facial expressions and a brass service bell attached to his wheelchair.
Margolis said that in playing the silent Hector Salamanca, he was inspired by his late mother-in-law, Shirley. “He was in a nursing home for many years in Florida after having a stroke,” he said.
“We used to visit her and she couldn’t talk. But she would get excited when we walked into the room, and the left side of her mouth would always do these contortions where the lips were sticking out, almost like she was chewing tobacco. So I stole it from her. I always say that the role is a tribute to Shirley.
In the spectacular season four finale, he received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for the episode “Face Off.”
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