ángel Salazar, actor whose foot-soldier Chi-Chi in Scarface developed a cult following – obituary
ángel Salazar, who has died aged 68, was a Cuban-born actor and comedian best known for playing sidekick to Al Pacino in two defining modern crime movies: Scarface (1983) and Carlito’s Way (1993), both directed by Brian De Palma.
In Scarface, a torrid Florida-set update of Howard Hawks’s Depression-era drama, Salazar was Chi-Chi, the pint-sized footsoldier who rescues Pacino’s migrant-turned-kingpin Tony Montana after an ambush by his chainsaw-wielding rival Hector the Toad (Al Israel). Cast to assist Pacino largely on the strength of his authentic Cuban accent, Salazar was rewarded with the role of being the last of Montana’s gang to die, shot down after a Colombian cartel attack the protagonist’s cocaine-dusted Miami mansion.
The film set an early watermark for 1980s excess, and sprawled far beyond its initial shooting schedule of two months, eventually taking seven. Its pop-culture footprint was equally sizeable. Tony Montana’s command “Chi-Chi, get the yayo” (anglicised Spanish for cocaine) adorned T-shirts and, latterly, memes. Salazar reprised his role in the video for “I’m Not a Player”, the rapper Big Pun’s US hit of 1997.
Carlito’s Way, drawn from novels by the Puerto Rican judge-turned-author Edwin Torres, was comparably rife with Latin colour. Draped in gaudy scarlet, Salazar played Walberto, an old associate who welcomes Pacino’s ex-con Carlito Brigante back to the streets of New York after his release from prison (“Should have figured I’d find you walking around up here. Doing a little ‘memory lane’ ”).
Another dazzling display of De Palma’s virtuosity, Carlito’s Way served as an unofficial Scarface reunion: Pacino, Salazar and Israel were joined on set by Michael P Moran, aka “Nick the Pig” in the earlier film. Although it had a slower burn than Scarface’s hair-trigger fireworks – reviews were mixed-to-positive and box-office receipts solid rather than spectacular – it was another tale of the American melting-pot, with some basis in Salazar’s own experience.
Born on March 2 1956, Salazar had left Cuba aged 18, swimming to the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay where he claimed political asylum. He settled in New York, where he began performing stand-up and auditioning for film roles, initially playing toughs and scrabblers in the urban dramas that were then in vogue; his screen debut came among the delinquents of Boulevard Nights (1979), Warner Bros’ attentive portrait of LA gang life.
Post-Scarface, he was seen soliciting the voluptuous Kitten Natividad at a strip joint (“I have Visa! Master Charge!”) in the 1984 teen pic The Wild Life, and playing a stand-up in Punchline (1988). In later life he lent stocky support to microbudget features, often with Hispanic performers and themes: he followed the Dan Brown spoof Da Pinche Code (2012) with separate roles in vampires-versus-zombies sequels Vamp Bikers Dos (2015) and Vamp Bikers Tres (2016).
Working at this level could be frustrating. “The industry has changed completely,” Salazar lamented in 2017. “I’m an old-school actor, and I work with a script… I ask the young filmmakers: ‘Where is the script?’ and most tell me that it’s in their minds.”
There were also brushes with the law: a drink-driving charge in 2012, and an arrest in Arizona in 2016 for defaulting on child support.
Yet he was proud of certain latter-career ventures, not least his collaborations with Nelson Denis, the New York State assemblyman turned filmmaker with whom Salazar made the political satire Vote for Me! in 2003 and, in 2018, Make America Great Again, in which Salazar played a Dominican navigating the iniquities of the US immigration system.
These liberal endeavours, however, ran counter to his own stated politics: a lifelong Republican, Salazar became a vocal Trump supporter online.
His final appearance will be in The Brooklyn Premiere, an indie comedy slated for release next year about the making of a Scarface parody – further indication of the shadow one role can cast over a performer’s entire career, even though, as Salazar pointed out in his stand-up set, he and Chi-Chi took quite different approaches to life. “If a bunch of Colombians are coming up to me with machine guns… man, I would not give a f--- about Al Pacino.”
ángel Salazar, born March 2 1956, died August 11 2024
