‘Scarface’ Star Dies At 68

Ángel Salazar, the supporting actor who helped elevate Al Pacino’s character Tony Montana to household status in the classic gangster movie “Scarface,” has died at 68.

Salazar played the ever-reliable Chi Chi in the film, accompanying Montana from his first days on U.S. soil as an asylum seeker fleeing communist Cuba. They quickly participated in overrunning a detention center and escaping into Miami, Florida, where they began at the bottom rung of the drug trade before working their way up the ladder. Salazar “passed away in his sleep” while staying with a friend in Brooklyn, according to a representative who confirmed the news with TMZ. The friend, who stayed with him “over the weekend,” checked on Salazar and found him in bed unresponsive, Ann Wingsong said. While no cause of death was announced with his passing, Wingsong said the actor had a history of heart afflictions.

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Born in 1956, Salazar landed the role of Chi Chi early in his acting career, playing a devoted henchman who commits deadly acts in the name of protecting Montana’s burgeoning cocaine empire. The 1983 film was released to mixed reaction and earned the controversial “X” rating before director Brian DePalma successfully petitioned the movie industry’s governing body to reduce its rating to “R.” The following year, “Scarface” became a top-selling home movie purchase on VHS tape, becoming the first film to amass 100,000 purchases at the full retail price of $79.95, according to Variety. It defined the careers of Pacino and Salazar who went on to star alongside Tom Hanks in 1988’s “Punchline” and again opposite Pacino in “Carlito’s Way” five years later. The Cuban-born actor was working with director Eric Spade on a film about Brooklyn at the time of his death which would have seen him united once more with actor Steven Bauer, who played Manolo, the telegenic advisor to Montoya, in “Scarface.”

Over his career, Salazar starred in 39 films including hits like “The Streetz 2′” (2020), “Make America Great Again” (2018), “The Streetz'” (2017), “Take it Back” (2016), “Laugh Killer Laugh” (2015), “Crumble” (2010), “Made in Brooklyn” (2007), and “Harlem Blues” (2003). He made limited television appearances between 1992 and 2017 to reminisce on his own time producing “Scarface.”

The New York Post cited Salazar’s unforgettable moment in the movie when Chi Chi saves Montana early on from a chainsaw-wielding gangster intent on dismembering him in a hotel bathtub. He goes down in a hail of gunfire protecting Montana as his rivals close in on his Miami compound.

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