Hector Elizondo
Born: December 22 1936
Where: Manhattan, New York, USA
After a brief brush with ballet as a youngster, Elizondo broke away from stereotyping to play a rich variety of comic and dramatic roles.
However, he also flirted with jobs as a conga player in a salsa band, a weightlifting coach and a classical guitarist.
Born to a Spanish Basque father and Puerto Rican mother, he was discovered by the legendary WC Handy (portrayed by Nat King Cole in St Louise Blues).
A keen athlete, he was scouted by the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team before pursing an acting career after first wanting to be a history teacher.
Establishing himself as a versatile stage actor, he won an OBIE Award for God, in the guise of a Puerto Rican steamroom attendant, in Steambath.
He also earned a Drama Desk nomination as George C Scott's scheming servant in Sly Fox in 1976, Larry Gelbart's contemporary reworking of Volpone.
Elizondo made his film debut (fully clothed) in the sexploitation film The Vixens in 1969.
He has since proved as comfortable switching ethnic identities as he has changing the many wigs that he sometimes uses to cover his natural baldness.
He played the police officer who takes lessons in dressing from Richard Gere in American Gigolo and is a favorite of director Garry Marshall, who has cast him in diverse roles like Angelo and Angela Bonafetti in Young Doctors in Love.
Elizondo was also cast as Matt Dillon's sympathetic working-class father in The Flamingo Kid; Tom Hanks' ad agency boss in Nothing in Common and Julia Roberts' fairy godfather in the form of a supportive hotel manager in Pretty Woman.
In 1991, Elizondo completed his fifth cinematic collaboration with Marshall, the 50s style "working-class" love story Frankie and Johnny, in which he played the Greek owner of a greasy spoon.
Additional roles in Dear God, The Other Sister and Runaway Bride as well as The Princess Diaries (and its sequel) followed.
He also headlined the Latin-flavored Tortilla Soup, a loose reworking of Ang Lee's 1994 feature Eat Drink Man Woman.
