Why Torres' Father On NCIS Looks So Familiar
There's nothing worse than having your parents show up uninvited when you're on the job.
But there's a version of that scenario that can get even more cringe-worthy, as Special Agent Nick Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) finds out in a Season 18 episode of "NCIS." Going to arrest the father who skipped out on you when you were a child, that's pretty bad, especially when you thought he'd been dead this whole time.
Miguel Torres tells his son that he left the family because of his work undercover for the CIA, and weirdly enough that story turns out to be partially true. When he's cleared of being a suspect of the crime Nick and the team were pursuing him for, he sticks around and helps with their investigation, going so far as to take two shots to the chest while pursuing a suspect with Nick. Fortunately for Miguel, he was wearing a bulletproof vest. Unfortunately for Nick, Miguel doesn't show for the dinner they agreed to have together after. He's checked out of his hotel and skipped town.
You don't have to look hard to find actor Steven Bauer, though. The veteran performer has been working in Hollywood for decades, playing big roles in popular series and prestige films.
Steven Bauer played Tony Montana's Number Two in Scarface
Bauer's first credited film role — he had already done some work in TV — was a doozy, acting opposite Al Pacino, directed by Brian De Palma, and working with a script written by Oliver Stone. You probably already guessed it, but Bauer appeared in 1983's late-blooming classic "Scarface."
Bauer plays Manny Ribera, Tony Montana's (Pacino) not-so-little friend who arrives with Tony in Miami from Cuba in 1980. He's by Tony's side throughout his friend's rise, remaining a top lieutenant as the pair overthrow Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia) and become the new kings of Miami. But Manny's amorous interest in Tony's sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) proves to be his undoing. When Tony catches the two together, he kills his friend before they can even explain that they got married while he was away.
He told The Hollywood Reporter in 2013 that the negative reviews after the release of the film were "a terrible blow," but that he had some warning of the rocky reception the movie was going to get from none other than Martin Scorsese. Bauer said Scorsese told him Hollywood was going to hate it, "because it's about them."
Steven Bauer played a kingpin battling for his freedom in Traffic
In 2000, Bauer took on a role as another drug boss, this time in one of the branching narratives of Steven Soderbergh's crime drama "Traffic."
Bauer's Karl Ayala becomes the biggest get of a major DEA investigation, someone the U.S. authorities are eager to make an example out of to send a message to the cartels. As such he spends much of his time in the movie behind bars. Instead, Ayala's story is mostly that of his wife, Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones), and her descent into the criminal underworld in order to stop her husband's trial and free him.
Though initially unaware of the nature of her husband's business, her loyalty leads her to hire a hitman to kill the key witness, Eduardo Ruiz (Miguel Ferrer), who has agreed to testify against Ayala in exchange for immunity. When this effort fails, she goes deeper, striking a deal with Ayala's cartel bosses to kill Ruiz.
This time her plan succeeds. Ayala walks, and figures out that it was his business partner, Arnie Metzger (Dennis Quaid), who put law enforcement on Ruiz's trail. Ayala gets the last word in their relationship, as he orders Metzger's death.
Steven Bauer tangled with Gus Fring on Breaking Bad
Bauer has nearly 200 credited roles as an actor on IMDb, and in the vast majority of them he does not play a drug kingpin. But in many of the best-known ones, he does, including his turn as Don Eladio Vuente on AMC's "Breaking Bad."
Don Eladio is a small character in the narrative of "Breaking Bad" –– he appears in just two episodes –– but a big figure in the life of Gus Fring (Giancarlo Stanton), the Albuquerque businessman whose empires both legitimate and illegitimate eventually bring him into contact with Walter White (Bryan Cranston).
Gus meets Eladio nearly 20 years before the events of the show, when he and his business partner, Max (James Martinez), propose to supply Eladio's Ciudad Juárez cartel with meth. Eladio is so unimpressed with their pitch that he has Max killed, but spares Gus' life due to his history in Chile. The rocky start to their relationship doesn't prevent Gus from becoming a distributor for Eladio in the American Southwest later, but as Gus begins to pull away from the cartel, Eladio authorizes violence to try to keep his partner in line.
The pair are able to strike a bargain that pleases Eladio, but when they go to toast it with some of Gus' tequila, it becomes apparent that Gus has poisoned the bottle, killing Eladio and many of his top lieutenants in one swoop. Bauer would appear again as Don Eladio in a pair of episodes of the prequel series "Better Call Saul."
Steven Bauer played the tough guy's tough guy on Ray Donovan
In 2013, Bauer landed another gig as an anti-hero sidekick, playing Avi Rudin on the Showtime series "Ray Donovan."
Avi is an ex-Mossad agent who works as a detective and as Ray's right-hand man in his operations as a fixer, but his chief role, to hear Bauer explain it, is providing the sort of emotional support someone as hard-bitten as Ray needs to hear. "[The producers] really wanted a few elements in Ray's life that can settle him, that could just ground him," Bauer told Parade, giving the example early in the series of how Avi is able to prevent an angry Ray from attempting to kill his father Mickey (Jon Voight). "When he goes for the gun in the trunk and I say 'What are you doing? You can't do this. You can't do this.' And he puts a clip in the gun and he's going to get in his car and drive to Malibu and shoot his father. And then I disarm like that, bang."
That close bond would have its ups and downs over the course of the series' first five seasons, but their loyalty to each other remained intact until the very end, at least of Bauer's tenure on the show, when Ray's part of a deal with Frank Barnes (Michael McGrady) is to kill Avi. Instead, Ray fakes his death, and Avi flees the country.