Mark Margolis, the prolific actor whose simmering air of threat as fearsome ex-drug lord Hector Salamanca on “Breaking Bad” transformed the innocent ringing of a bellhop bell into a harbinger of doom, died Thursday in Manhattan. He is 83 years old.
His death, at Mount Sinai Hospital following a brief illness, was confirmed in a statement Friday by his son, Morgan Margolis. Mr. Margolis lived in Manhattan.
Mr. Margolis has earned more than 160 credits in films and on television, gaining particular notice in memorable roles in Brian De Palma’s “Scarface” (1983), playing opposite Al Pacino as a cocaine-syndicate henchman, and in the Jim Carrey comedy “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” (1994), in which he played Ventura’s aggrieved landlord. delicious mistreatment.
He also became a go-to actor for director Darren Aronofsky, appearing in his films “Pi” (1998), “Requiem for a Dream” (2000), “The Fountain” (2006), “The Wrestler” (2008) , “Black Swan” (2010) and “Noah” (2014).
But no paper was made of him immediately recognized by millions of viewers as Hector in Vince Gilligan’s critically acclaimed series “Breaking Bad,” which ran for five seasons on AMC, beginning in 2008, starring Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul and Anna Gunn, and in its prequel, “Better Call Saul, ” which ran for six seasons beginning in 2015, starring Bob Odenkirk and Giancarlo Esposito — two of many artists who appeared on both shows — as well as Rhea Seehorn.
The role, in “Breaking Bad,” brought Mr. Margolis earned an Emmy nomination in 2012 for outstanding guest actor in a drama series.
An old former drug cartel don from Mexico, Hector, also known as Tio, lives in a nursing home in New Mexico, unable to speak or walk after a stroke but still firmly in control of his powers as a rival to Walter White (Mr. Cranston), a calm high school chemistry teacher who becomes a coldhearted kingpin in the methamphetamine trade.
Despite his lack of dialogue on “Breaking Bad,” Mr. Margolis proved a scene stealer from his wheelchairhis eyes are bulging, his face is shaking with rage, despite the nasal cannula pumping oxygen into his nose and his index finger furiously hitting his bell, which is attached to an arm of the chair, whenever necessary he attention.
“Everyone says, ‘My God, it’s hard to work no word,’” he said in a 2012 interview with Fast Company. “My joke is, ‘No. I’m grounded in the fact that I’ve been acting without hair for years, and that’s not a problem. So now, I act without words.’”
As a young actor, he added, he was used to communicating emotions without dialogue. He also borrowed mannerisms, including a tobacco-chewing motion on the side of his mouth, from his mother-in-law, who was confined to a Florida nursing home after a stroke.
As viewers discovered on “Better Call Saul,” which featured Mr. Margolis as a ambulatory and verbose Hector, the character wound up in a wheelchair after a defector in his organization switched his medication to incapacitate him, leading to a stroke.
Despite the character’s broken moral compass and hair-trigger anger, Mr. Margolis manages to evoke Hector’s complexity — his personality, even.
“You don’t look like a villain they are villains,” he said in a 2012 interview with The Forward, the Jewish newspaper. “Play them like you know where they came from. I hope you do.”
Mark Margolis was born on Nov. 26, 1939, in Philadelphia to Isidore and Fanya (Fried) Margolis. He studied briefly at Temple University before moving to New York, where at 19 he got a job as a personal assistant to method acting guru Stella Adler. He also took classes with Lee Strasberg at his famous Actors Studio.
After making brief appearances in television shows like “Kojak” and in movies like the Dudley Moore comedy “Arthur” and “Dressed to Kill” Mr. De Palma (both from 1981), Mr. Margolis made his debut in “Scarface,” playing Alberto the Shadow, a bodyguard and hit man for Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar), the Bolivian drug boss who shows Mr. Pacino’s Tony the ropes in the cocaine business.
In one slyly comic moment in “Breaking Bad,” Hector can be seen watching television a famous scene from “Scarface” where Tony willingly shoots Alberto in the head when he learns that Alberto’s plan to car-bomb a sleazy journalist will also kill the journalist’s wife and children.
Despite his turns as a Latin heavy, Mr. Margolis, who is Jewish, does not speak Spanish, a point that got him there is no shortage of sarcasm from native speakers.
“It’s okay lived in Mexico,” he said in a 2016 interview with Vulture, New York magazine’s culture site. “I know enough about its grammar, and I’m pretty good at its accent. If I can get a good tutor, I can lock it down quickly.”
In addition to his son, he is survived by his wife of 61 years, Jacqueline Margolis; a brother, Jerome; and three grandchildren.
In the years between “Scarface” and “Breaking Bad,” Mr. Margolis made him a well-known actor, if not a famous one. “People often come up to me and say, ‘You’re such an amazing character actor,'” he told The Forward, sounding half-serious. “But I’m not a character actor. I’m a weird romantic lead.”
Unlike most romantic leads, however, Mr. Margolis struggles at times to make ends meet. Fans, he told The New York Observer in 2012, “think of me as some kind of rich manthat everyone in the movie is making the kind of money that Angelina Jolie is making.”
He and his wife have lived in the same apartment in Manhattan’s TriBeCa neighborhood since 1975.
At least his turn as Hector gave him a little extra income at the height of the show, after a messaging app called Dingbel reserved Hector’s simplest bell command — one ding for yes, two for no. Dingbel hired him as a speaker.
As Mr. Margolis told Vulture: “I tell people I’m the second most famous bell ringer after Quasimodo.”
