Vincent Schiavelli was an actor who portrayed Enyos on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series.
Career[]
Schiavelli's first film role occurred in Miloš Forman's 1971 production Taking Off, in which he played a counselor who taught parents of runaway teens to smoke marijuana in order to better understand their children's experiences. His aptitude and distinctive angular appearance soon provided him with a steady stream of supporting roles, often in Miloš Forman films, namely One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Valmont, and the 1999 biopic Man on the Moon.
Schiavelli played the biology teacher Mr. Vargas in the 1982 hit comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a role he reprized in the 1986 television spin-off Fast Times. He was cast in a similar role in the cult hit Better Off Dead, in which he played Mr. Kerber, a geometry teacher.
In 1987, Schiavelli starred alongside Tim Conway in the short film comedy Dorf on Golf, and in Dorf and the First Games of Mount Olympus in 1988. In 1990, he played the Subway Ghost in Ghost and, in 1992, he played in Tim Burton's Batman Returns as the "Organ Grinder," one of the Penguin's henchmen. He appeared as another villain in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), as a silent monk in The Frisco Kid (1979), and as John O'Connor, one of the evil Red Lectroids in the 1984 cult classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. In 1997, Schiavelli was named one of America's best character actors by Vanity Fair magazine. In 2002, he played a children's television show host turned heroin addict named Buggy Ding Dong in Death to Smoochy.
Schiavelli's first television role came in 1972 as Peter Panama in The Corner Bar, the first sustained portrayal of a gay character on American television. His other television credits include playing uncle Enyos in the TV classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and in Taxi as the priest who marries Latka and Simka. He appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Arsenal of Freedom" as a holographic salesman, on Miami Vice as a research scientist who conspires to steal a top-secret prototype weapon from his employer, and an uncredited role in an episode of Punky Brewster. In Highlander: The Series, he played Leo Atkins, a homeless Vietnam Vet accused of murder in the episode "Innocent Man."
Schiavelli also made several voice appearances in the animated television show Hey Arnold! and voiced Dr. Hellman in the video game Corpse Killer.
Schiavelli wrote a number of cookbooks and food articles for various magazines and newspapers. He received a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award in 2001 and was nominated on several other occasions.
Schiavelli served as honorary co-chair of the National Marfan Foundation, an organization which serves those affected by Marfan syndrome, from which he suffered.[1]
Vincent Schiavelli died from lung cancer on December 26, 2005, with 57 years old, at his home in Polizzi Generosa, the Sicilian town where his grandfather was born, and about which he wrote in his 2002 book Many Beautiful Things: Stories and Recipes from Polizzi Generosa.[2]
Buffyverse credits[]
Schiavelli special guest-starred as Jenny's uncle Enyos in two episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 2:
External links[]
Vincent Schiavelli on Wikipedia
Vincent Schiavelli on IMDb
References[]
- ↑ "NMF Mourns the Loss of its Honorary Co-Chair, Vincent Schiavelli." National Marfan Foundation, December 27, 2005. Archived from the original on June 16, 2013.
- ↑ "Character actor Schiavelli dies." BBC NEWS, December 26, 2005.