Mark Margolis, best known for playing drug runner Hector Salamanca on Breaking Bad, and its prequel Better Call Saul, has died at the age of 83.
He passed away on August 3 after a short illness at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City, with his wife Jacqueline and son Morgan at his bedside.
Robert Kolker of Red Letter Entertainment, his manager since 2007, said in a statement, “He was one of a kind. We won’t see his likes again. He was a treasured client and a lifelong friend. I was lucky to know him.”
Mark Margolis was born in 1939 and studied drama with Stella Adler at the Actors Studio. His first role was an uncredited one in a non-performing minor role in the pornographic feature in 1976, The Opening of Misty Beethoven, followed by the TV movie The Other Side of Victory the same year. His first prominent film role was in Scarface in 1983 as the cold-blooded Alberto the Shadow, who tried to make Tony Montana (Al Pacino) murder a journalist as well as his wife and children.
His first TV role came in an episode of Kojak in 1977. He then recurred on the 1980s’ The Equalizer as a hotwired operative who helped Robert McCall (Edward Woodward). On Oz (1997-2003), he played mob boss Antonio Nappa. It was in 2009 that he began recurring as Hector, a once-feared Mexican cartel boss rendered mute and virtually motionless by a debilitating stroke and used his forefinger to ring a bell on his wheelchair to communicate, on Breaking Bad. He was nominated for an Emmy for the role for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2012.
Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
Margolis also collaborated several times with Darren Aronofsky, starting with 1998’s Pi as the mentor to Sean Gullette’s paranoid number theorist, as well as a pawnbroker in 2000’s Requiem for a Dream, a priest (written specifically for him) in 2006’s The Fountain, and Mickey Rourke‘s sleazy supermarket boss in 2008’s The Wrestler.
Margolis’ numerous other TV credits included Your Honor, Prodigal Son, Snowpiercer, The Blacklist, The Affair, Gotham, American Horror Story, and Person of Interest.
Margolis is survived by his wife Jacqueline, his son Morgan and his wife Heide, his grandsons (Ben, Aidan, and Henry), and his brother Jerome and his wife Ann. The family suggests donations to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in lieu of flowers.