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Antonio Fargas

Antonio Fargas has spent decades moving easily between film and television, bringing a distinctive presence to streetwise characters, comic turns and supporting roles. Born in New York City on August 14, 1946, he was raised in Spanish Harlem as one of 11 children. His father, Manuel, was Puerto Rican and worked for the City of New York, while his mother, Mildred, came from Trinidad and Tobago. Fargas graduated from Fashion Industries High School in 1965. His breakout screen role came in Robert Downey Sr.'s comedy Putney Swope in 1969. During the early 1970s, he appeared in a run of blaxploitation films that included Across 110th Street and Foxy Brown. Those roles helped establish the quick, alert energy that would serve him especially well on television. Fargas gained wider recognition as Huggy Bear, the streetwise informant on Starsky & Hutch. The character became the defining role of his career, but Fargas continued working across a broad range of television. Beginning in 1982, he played upper-class lawyer Les Baxter on All My Children, remaining with the soap until the character was killed in 1987. He later guest-starred on Living Single, Martin, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and The Steve Harvey Show. Fargas also showed a willingness to play with his screen history. He appeared in the blaxploitation spoof I'm Gonna Git You Sucka in 1988 and the Wayans brothers parody Don't Be a Menace in 1996. From 2005 to 2009, he had a regular role as Doc on Everybody Hates Chris. His work also reached British screens and stages, including the film Sucker Punch and a 2006 Royal Exchange Theatre revival of August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, in which he played Toledo. Across those roles, Fargas has remained a familiar character actor whose career connects several eras of American film and television.