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3 articles from 2009

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Ricardo Montalban: From Latin Lovers to Khan (1920-2009)

16 January 2009 8:38 AM, PST | FilmExperience | See recent FilmExperience news »

Yesterday was a heavy business day so I'm late on the news.

The most important movie item yesterday was the passing of Ricardo Montalban (pictured left, source). He was 88 years old when he passed away on Wednesday. His greatest fame came in the 80s from television. You may remember him as either "Mr. Roarke" on Fantasy Island, "Zach Powers" on Dynasty spinoff The Colbys or as the title villain in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) --the only Star Trek outing I've ever loved and largely thanks to him. Khan was a character he was reprising from a guest stint on the 60s television show and yes, that was his real chest in the movie. He was eating his spinach as a sexagenarian.

Like many actors who get choice supporting roles in genre movies and/or television stardom in their senior years, Montalban was already famous. He'd been both »

- NATHANIEL R

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Ricardo Montalban Dies At 88

15 January 2009 2:04 AM, PST | Studio Briefing - Film News | See recent Studio Briefing - Film News news »

Ricardo Montalban, one of the first Mexican-born actors to rise to stardom in Hollywood, died Wednesday in Los Angeles at age 88 of what his son-in-law described as "complications related to old age." While Montalbán worked tirelessly on behalf of Latin-American cases -- he founded the nonprofit Nosotros Foundation aimed at improving the image of Latinos in Hollywood -- he himself never played a Mexican on screen. "A Spaniard, yes. An Argentinean, yes, a Brazilian, yes, but never a Mexican," he once remarked in an interview, noting that characters from those countries were considered more "exotic" to Hollywood filmmakers than Mexicans. (He once even played a Japanese Kabuki theater performer in 1957's Sayonara.) He also famously played "Mr. Roarke" on the long-running Fantasy Island and the title character in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. »

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Ricardo Montalban Dies

14 January 2009 5:11 PM, PST | EmpireOnline | See recent EmpireOnline news »

Following the sad news of the death of The Prisoner star Patrick McGoohan comes word that Ricardo Montalban – Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan’s titular villain – has passed away at the age of 88.The Mexican-born actor’s cause of death has not yet been announced.Born in Mexico City in 1920, Montalban was one of the first Hispanic actors to make a name for himself in Hollywood – despite this, and a string of Latin lover roles in the 40s and 50s, he also played a number of Japanese-born characters in his early career, including Nakamura in the Oscar-winning Sayonara.A smooth-talking, handsome man with a penchant for singing and dancing, Montalban wound up in a number of musicals in the 1950s and 1960s, including The Singing Nun, alongside Debbie Reynolds.The 60s also saw him create the role of the villainous, would-be despot Khan Noonien Singh in an episode »

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2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2004

3 articles from 2009

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