Henry Silva, Actor Who Specialized in Menace, Dies at 95
Henry Silva, Actor Who Specialized in Menace, Dies at 95
Henry Silva, who for decades was high on the call list of any Hollywood casting director in search of a particularly menacing villain, died on Wednesday in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 95.His son Scott Silva confirmed the death, at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital.Mr. Silva appeared in more than 130 movies and television shows, scowling through many of them as a thug, a hit man or some other nefarious character. He was an assassin sent by a mob boss to wreak vengeance in “Johnny Cool” in 1963. He was a drug addict with a tendency to shoot people in the 1981 Burt Reynolds movie “Sharky’s Machine.” He was a corrupt C.I.A. operative in “Above the Law,” a 1988 film starring Steven Seagal.He was even reprehensible as a cartoon: He voiced the supervillain Bane in animated TV shows involving both Batman and Superman.Yet Mr. Silva was a serious actor, with training at the Actors Studio in New York and appearances on Broadway and in well-regarded movies like “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962). He prided himself on not letting the typecastingmake him lazy.“I see a lot of actors who play heavies, but they always play the same heavies,” he told The Chicago Tribune in 2000. “I have a seven-minute reel of clips from my movies, and none of the guys are the same. I don’t always go to the same place, because that would be boring.”
