Gregory Sierra, best known for his roles as Sgt. Miguel ‘Chano’ Amanguale in the ABC police series ‘Barney Miller’ and as Julio Fuentes died in the NBC sitcom ‘Sanford and Son’, his wife Helene Taber said on Sunday. He was 83.
Taber died on January 4 in Laguna Woods, California, after suffering from cancer. Sierra, who was of Puerto Rican descent, was born and bred in New York.
“He was the most wonderful person,” Taber said. “He was a good heart and a brilliant actor.”
Actor Edward James Olmos said in a tweet that those who knew Sierra admired his laughter, kindness, wit, and ‘extraordinary artistic ability’. Olmos described Sierra as a friend, a mentor, and a force of nature that I was so grateful to have known and worked with. RIP ‘
Sierra achieved success in the early 1970s through his recurring role as Julio Fuentes, Fred G. Sanford’s neighbor, in ‘Sanford and Son’ – a series based on a British TV show starring Norman Lear as Bud Yorkin as’ adapted a sitcom for NBC.
Before reaching ‘Sanford and Son’, Sierra already had ties to Lear. He appears in one episode of the beloved sitcom ‘All in the Family’ as Paul Benjamin, a Jewish extremist. Paul and Archie Bunker close friendship after someone paints a swastika on the front door of the family. Paul offers the Bunkers protection, but is eventually killed by a car bomb. This is the only episode with no applause from the audience to end the show.
Sierra then plays Sgt. Miguel “Chano” Amanguale on “Barney Miller”, a sitcom about the lives of a group of detectives from New York working in Greenwich Village’s 12th ring station house. While the show initially focused on Capt. Barney Miller’s work and home life, it was gradually about the officers of the district.
Sierra portrayed Chano as a dedicated and discouraged agent who was emotionally invested in his work. Nowhere is it better shown than in the episode “The Hero” in 1975, in which his character kills two suspects while preventing a robbery. His colleagues believe he deserves praise, but Chano feels differently, and he breaks out and cries.
Sierra’s career remained steady in the late 1990s, often portraying him as law enforcers. He has appeared on ‘Miami Vice’, ‘Murder, She Wrote’, ‘Hill Street Blues’ and ‘MacGyver’. His other TV roles included guest appearances in ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ and ‘The X-Files’.
“Miami Vice” actor Olivia Brown tweeted that Sierra’s death “hurts me.”
“Gregory is a beautiful soul and he deserves to rest in peace. My condolences to his loved ones I loved him so much,” Brown said.
In the movie ‘The Towering Inferno’, Sierra played the bartender Carlo, and he appears as a mutant named Verger in ‘Beneath the Planet of the Apes’. His other films include ‘Papillon’, ‘Honey, I Blew Up the Kid’ and Orson Welles’ ‘The Other Side of the Wind’.
As a resident of Laguna Woods, he starred in 2009 in a local production of the play “See How They Run”. “Any role is demanding if you put yourself through a process,” Sierra told The Orange County Register at the time. “Because you expect something from yourself.”
He is survived by Taber.
Montez Flenoury and Variety contributed.