Henry Silva (born September 15, 1928) is an American actor who has played a wide variety of movie roles.
Silva was born in Brooklyn, New York of Sicilian and Spanish descent. He grew up in Harlem and quit school when he was 13 years old to attend drama classes, supporting himself as a dishwasher and waiter in a Manhattan hotel.
By 1955, Silva felt ready to audition for the Actors Studio. He was one of five students chosen out of more than 2,500 applicants. When the Studio staged Michael V. Gazzo's play, A Hatful of Rain as a classroom project, it proved so successful that it was presented in Broadway, with students Ben Gazzara, Shelley Winters, Harry Guardino, Tony Franciosa, and Silva in key roles. Silva also appeared in the play's film version.
In Hollywood, he played a succession of villains in films including The Tall T, The Bravados, Green Mansions, Ocean's Eleven, Johnny Cool, and the original The Manchurian Candidate (aside from Angela Lansbury and Leslie Parrish, Silva is one of the film's few surviving featured actors). He also had a comic role as one of the stepbrothers in the 1960 Jerry Lewis film Cinderfella, a parody of Cinderella with Lewis in the title role. He also voiced Bane in Batman:The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures.
He also sometimes played heavies on TV. For example he played a hit man in "Better Bargain" on Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Other TV roles included an episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery.
An Italian film producer made Silva an offer to star as a hero for a change and he moved his family overseas. Silva's turning-point picture was a spaghetti western, The Hills Run Red, which made him a hot box office commodity in Spain, Italy, Germany, and France.
Returning to the United States, he co-starred with Frank Sinatra in Contract on Cherry Street, then signed on as Buck Rogers' evil adversary, as well as the villainous Kurt Zagon in Above the Law. In 1999, he appeared as the sorrowful and doomed mob boss Ray Vargo in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.
Silva returned permanently to Los Angeles, but forays back to Europe's film production centers. He speaks Italian and Spanish fluently.
Family
He is married and the father of two sons, Michael and Scott.
References
^ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20000331/ai_n13851222
^ DVD commentary for The Return of Mr. Moto, Mr. Moto Collection - Vol. 2, 20th Century Fox, 2007-02-13
External links
Henry Silva at the Internet Movie Database
Henry Silva at Allmovie
NewPP limit report
Preprocessor node count: 421/1000000
Post-expand include size: 3047/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 1237/2048000 bytes
Expensive parser function count: 1/500
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Silva"
Categories: 1928 births | Living people | American B-movie actors | American stage actors | American television actors | American voice actors | Spanish-Americans | People from Brooklyn | People from Manhattan | People from Los Angeles, California | Sicilian-Americans | Spaghetti Western actors | New York actorsHidden categories: All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since February 2008
Views
Article
Discussion
Edit this page
History
Personal tools
Log in / create account
if (window.isMSIE55) fixalpha();
Navigation
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Search
Interaction
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact Wikipedia
Donate to Wikipedia
Help
Toolbox
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Printable version Permanent linkCite this page
Languages
Deutsch
Français
Italiano
Suomi
This page was last modified on 3 August 2008, at 12:53.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
if (window.runOnloadHook) runOnloadHook();
