TOMAS MILIAN

(3 March 1933 - 22 March 2017)

The Cuban-born American-Italian actor and singer trained at the Actors Studio in New York. After a short spell on Broadway he was discovered for a film career in Italy that covered all manner of action films, from spaghetti Westerns and police thrillers to violent comedies. Director Mauro Bolognini put him in The Big Night, written by Pasolini, and more Italian films followed, including Boccaccio ’70 (the Visconti segment with Romy Schneider), then Carol Reed’s The Agony and the Ecstasy. Milian rarely escaped from action parts until The Last Movie in 1971 when director Dennis Hopper cast him as a priest. He was in Winter Kills with Jeff Bridges, Havana with Robert Redford, Oliver Stone’s JFK, Spielberg’s Amistad and Soderbergh’s Traffic. In 2014 he played Gramps in Fugly! with John Leguizamo, his final appearance in a career covering some 120 films.

MICHAEL DARVELL