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Al Israel

Al Israel was an American film and television actor whose screen presence is most closely associated with one of Scarface’s most menacing early encounters. Born in Manhattan on April 16, 1935, Israel played Hector the Toad, the chainsaw-wielding Colombian drug dealer in the 1983 film. It is a relatively contained role, but one placed at the center of a sequence designed to make the danger surrounding Al Pacino’s Tony Montana brutally clear. Israel gives Hector the hard, direct manner the scene requires, creating a character remembered less for elaborate backstory than for the immediate threat he brings into the room. That appearance became Israel’s best-known work, but it was not his only connection to Pacino on screen. A decade after Scarface, he appeared alongside him again in Carlito’s Way. The two films gave Israel a place in separate crime stories built around Pacino characters, each looking at ambition, violence and the consequences of trying to survive in a dangerous world. Israel’s association with Scarface continued beyond the original movie. He was one of three original cast members who contributed voice work to the 2006 video game Scarface: The World Is Yours. The game sold more than two million units in under two years, showing how far the film’s world and characters had travelled more than two decades after its release. Israel’s career also included work as a television actor. Across those screen appearances, he was the kind of performer who could make a sharply defined supporting part register without pulling attention away from the larger story. He died in West Covina, California, on March 16, 2011, one month before what would have been his 76th birthday.