He was one of the great masters of the Italian Spagetti Western: The U.S. actor Eli Wallach has died at the age of 98 years. In the sixties, he was instrumental in a new era of the film – as bandits cast.

He was with classics like “Wedding Crashers” and “The Magnificent Seven” world famous: The U.S. actor Eli Wallach is dead He died on Tuesday at the age of 98 years, reports the “New York Times”, citing Wallach’s daughter Katherine.

Wallach, who frequently appeared alongside his wife Anne Jackson, played extremely different characters: So he came about as grizzled Don Altobello in the third part of “The Godfather” and starred in “The Waltz of the Toreadors” a French general. In “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (Wedding Crashers), he starred opposite Clint Eastwood the part of the ugly bandits.

His breakthrough as a gelding Hoodlum: In the Western “The Magnificent Seven” of 1960, he played the Mexican bandit Calvera. Six years later he put in spaghetti westerns “Bad and the Ugly” Tuco the gangster dar. gelding was formative on the young genre of Italo-Westerns involved in these years and rose to become one of the great character actors of the 20th century. “I wanted to do my whole life,” he said in 2010 about his profession as an actor.

Eli Wallach was the son of Polish immigrants. In 1945 he made his debut on Broadway in 1951 and got for his theater performance a Tony Award. Although he played dozens of roles in major films, he never won an Oscar for his nearly 70-year career. 2010, however, the character actor received an honorary Oscar in recognition of his life’s work. One of his last great performances counted in the same year his role as a banker in the financial drama remake “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” by Oliver Stone.

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