Vincent Schiavelli's face, the actor once said, was his calling card.
Schiavelli, whose long, gangly, almost sad features graced some 150 TV shows and movies, most memorably Ghost, died Monday of lung cancer in Italy, where he had been living. He was 57.
"Enjoy him. Relish him. And don't let his looks distract you from one very simple, obvious fact: Schiavelli is a very fine actor," authors Tara Ariano and Adam Sternbergh wrote in their recently published character actor guide, Hey! It's That Guy!
In the parlance of the book, Schiavelli was "that freaky-looking science teacher," owing to his bit in the seminal 1982 teen flick Fast Times at Ridgemont High--he was the downbeat science teacher with the perky blonde wife, played by the late Lana Clarkson. He also schooled a young John Cusack in the 1985 comedy Better Off Dead.
Even if Schiavelli later reprised his Fast Times character, Mr. Vargas, in the short-lived 1986 TV series version, he was not trapped in the genre. Such was the perk of flying below the radar.
In Amadeus, Schiavelli was an 18th century valet. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, he was a scruffy psychiatric patient. In Man on the Moon, he was a powerful ABC network executive. All three movies were directed by Milos Forman. Schiavelli worked often for the Oscar-winning filmmaker, dating back to 1971's Taking Off--the Czech-born Forman's and the Brooklyn-born Schiavelli's first Hollywood feature.
For more than 30 years, Schiavelli worked steadily. He told UGO.com that his biggest lull occurred after his biggest success, 1990's Ghost. His turn as the angry spirit who haunts New York's subway cars, and eventually helps Patrick Swayze adjust to life on the other side was seen by a lot of moviegoers--maybe too many, for Schiavelli's taste.
"What you get [when you're a character actor] is, your face is your calling card kind of thing," Schiavelli said in the UGO.com interview, "and you're not so famous that you can't go out."
Fortunately for Schiavelli, he continued to get out on screen. Post-Ghost credits included Batman Returns, Tomorrow Never Dies (as a Bond villain), and Death to Smoochy.
Schiavelli began penning cookbooks in the 1990s. In each, the recipes were seasoned liberally with stories of growing up with an Italian master chef for a grandfather. His most recent, 2002's Many Beautiful Things, was a snapshot of Polizzi Generosa, the Sicilian village where his grandfather were born. It was in Polizzi Generosa that Schiavelli died.
Born on Nov. 10, 1948, Schiavelli was diagnosed as a child with Marfan Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that can, and in Schiavelli's situation did, cause lopsided-looking eyes (his trademark as a character actor) and above-average height (he was 6-foot-5). Schiavelli served as an honorary cochair of the National Marfan Foundation.
Owing to his status as a role player, and not a star, Schiavelli didn't generate headlines for his personal life--save for his brief marriage to fellow character actress Allyce Beasley. Their 1985 wedding occurred during the height of Beasley's fame on then "It" show, Moonlighting. The two met in 1982 on the set of the sitcom Taxi (they both had guest-starring bits). The couple had one child, and divorced in 1988. (Story courtesy of E! Online)
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