Gregory Sierra, a longtime actor who appeared in television shows and movies, most notably in “Barney Miller” and “Sanford and Son,” died of cancer on January 4 in Laguna Woods, California. He was 83.
Born in New York, Sierra broke through when he was cast as Julio Fuentes, the Puerto Rican neighbor of Redd Foxx’s Fred Sanford in ‘Sanford and Son’.
After leaving that series, Sierra played one of the original detectives who worked from the diverse 12th Precinct in Greenwich Village on ABC’s ‘Barney Miller’. He was written after the series’ second season to star in “AES Hudson Street,” a sitcom about a hectic emergency room, but it lasted only six episodes.
Sierra also appeared as a radical Jewish vigilante in “Archie Is Branded,” a 1973 episode of CBS “” All in the Family, “in which someone paints a swastika on Archie’s door. The episode, which ends in silence, was one of the most memorable of the long-running series.
Born on January 25, 1937 in Spanish Harlem, Sierra attended the Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception in Brooklyn. After school, he worked at the National Shakespeare Company and the Shakespeare Festival in New York before moving to Los Angeles where he got bits on television and supporting roles in such films as ‘Beneath the Planet of the Apes’, ‘Getting Straight,’ ” Papillon “and” The Towering Inferno. “
He had recurring roles on multiple television shows, including Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice and Murder, She Wrote, and has appeared on a host of other series.
“Miami Vice” star Edward James Olmos tweeted that he read the news of Sierra’s death and wept. “Gregory Sierra will be with us forever,” Olmos wrote. ‘Those who knew him. His laughter. His humor. His kindness. His extraordinary artistic skill. He was a friend, a mentor, a force of nature I was so grateful to know and work with. REST IN PEACE.”