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Henry Silva

A cool, ominous presence in dramas and action films from the late 1950s through the late 1990s, character actor Henry Silva specialized in playing characters that meant business - often deadly business - in a long and varied list of features that included "Ocean's Eleven" (1960), "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962)," "The Hills Run Red" (1966) and "Above the Law" (1985). Though of European descent, Silva's saturnine features and facility for accents allowed him to be cast as a wide array of ethnicities - from Mexicans and Italians to Native Americans and even Asians. Unlike many other actors who played a diverse range of types - like Frank De Kova or J. Carroll Naish - Silva's personality and talent always rose above the character's limitations, which made him among the hardest working and most recognizable character actors of the late 20th century.