Tomas Milian


Tomas Milian was a Cuban American actor and singer with Italian citizenship, known for the emotional intensity and humour he brought to roles in European genre films.
A student of Lee Strasberg, Milian studied method acting at the Actors Studio in New York City. In Italy, he was discovered by director Mauro Bolognini and appeared in supporting roles in several drama films during the late-1950s and early-1960s, including as Raphael in Carol Reed's The Agony and the Ecstasy. Throughout the late-1960s and early-1970s, Milian established himself as a dynamic leading actor in a series of Spaghetti Western films, most notably The Big Gundown and Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot!.
Following a decline in the popularity of Spaghetti Westerns, Milian transitioned to roles in poliziottesco films. After receiving acclaim for his performance as a psychotic killer in Almost Human, he made appearances in Emergency Squad, The Tough Ones and The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist. After returning to the United States in 1985, Milian continued to perform supporting roles in film productions, including JFK, Amistad, Traffic and The Lost City. Milian died in 2017.

Biography

Milian was born in Havana as the son of a Cuban general. His father was arrested and jailed: he later committed suicide on December 31, 1946. Milián then decided to leave Cuba and pursue his wishes of being an actor. He settled in the United States to study at New York's Actors Studio and later became an American citizen. In 1969, he became a naturalized Italian citizen.
Milian was bisexual; prior to his marriage to actress Margherita Valletti, he had relationships with both men and women.

Career

After starting a career in the United States, Milian went to Italy in 1958 to take part in a theatre festival in Spoleto. He eventually decided to relocate to Italy, where he lived for over 25 years, becoming a very successful performer. His first film part in Italy was in the 1959 picture La notte brava. Although his voice was usually dubbed due to his accent, Milián performed his lines in Italian. He initially starred in arthouse movies and worked with directors such as Mauro Bolognini and Luchino Visconti.
After five years of making what he deemed "intellectual" movies, Milián was unhappy with his contract with producer Franco Cristaldi and thought of going back to the United States. Needing money to start over, he took the opportunity to star as a bandit in a spaghetti western called The Bounty Killer. The film boosted his career, and ultimately resulted in his staying in Italy. He became a star of the spaghetti western genre, where he often played Mexican bandits or revolutionaries, roles in which he spoke in his real voice. He starred in The Ugly Ones, The Big Gundown, Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot!, Face to Face, Run, Man, Run, Death Sentence, Tepepa, Compañeros, Sonny and Jed, Life Is Tough, Eh Providence? and Four of the Apocalypse.
As the spaghetti westerns dwindled, Milián remained a star in many genre films, playing both villains and heroes in various polizieschi movies. He starred with Barbara Bouchet in the giallo Don't Torture a Duckling. In addition to his role in Almost Human and appearances in Emergency Squad, The Tough Ones and The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist, he also appeared in two film series - Bruno Corbucci's Nico Giraldi series and Umberto Lenzi's Er Monnezza films. His other films during this period include the giallo Don't Torture a Duckling and the non-genre films The Last Movie, Luna, Identification of a Woman and Monsignor.
He later turned to comedy, playing the recurrent characters of petty thief Monnezza and Serpico-like police officer Nico Giraldi in a variety of crime-comedy pictures. Although his voice was dubbed most of the time by Ferruccio Amendola, Milián wrote his own lines in Roman slang. Milián's inventive use of romanesco made him a cult performer in Italy. Bruno Corbucci, the director of many of these films commented, "At the cinemas as soon as Tomás Milián appeared on the screen, when he made a wisecrack and in the heaviest situations, then it was a pandemonium, it was like being at the stadium."
As Milián used similar makeups and accents in portraying both characters, Monnezza and Nico were occasionally confused by Italian audiences, who sometimes referred erroneously to them both as Monnezza, or Er Monnezza, and still closely associate Milián with these performances.
Milián also appeared in non-genre pictures, such as Bernardo Bertolucci's La Luna, for which he won a Nastro d'Argento for Best supporting Actor, and Michelangelo Antonioni's Identification of a Woman.
As he grew older, Milián decided to go back to the United States. He appeared in Sidney Pollack's Havana, Steven Spielberg's Amistad, Steven Soderbergh's Traffic as well as Andy García's The Lost City, about Revolutionary Cuba. He has also played many roles on stage. In 2005, he portrayed Generalisimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina in the film version of Mario Vargas Llosa's novel The Feast of the Goat.
Milian was found dead from a stroke at his home in Miami on 22 March 2017.
On October 11, 2017 he received the Leone in Memoriam award at the 7º Almería Western Film Festival. It was picked up by his friend Luis Santeiro.

Filmography