Wallach was most notably known as Tuco from Sergio Leone’s masterpiece The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, but he also worked alongside Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe in The Misfits, Yul Brynner in The Magnificent Seven, Al Pacino in The Godfather Part III and many more as one of the finest character actors of his day.
As an actor, he took up the “Method” school of thought and studied at the Actors Studio alongside Marlon Brando, Sidney Lumet and his eventual wife, actress Anne Jackson, with whom he leaves three children.
Wallach first came to stardom in Elia Kazan’s 1956 Baby Doll, earning him a BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer to Film and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The Academy eventually awarded him with a Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 2010 “for a lifetime’s worth of indelible screen characters.”
He was equally successful as a TV actor, including one Emmy win and four other Primetime nominations up through his guest supporting role on Showtime’s Nurse Jackie. Wallach’s last film roles were in 2010 in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer.