Gregory Sierra, a longtime actor who appeared in television shows and movies, most notably in “Barney Miller” and “Sanford and Son,” died Jan. 4 in Laguna Woods, California, due to a cancer. He was 83 years old.
A native of New York, Sierra’s breakthrough came when he was named Julio Fuentes, Puerto Rico’s neighbor Fred Sanford of Redd Foxx in “Sanford and Son.”
After leaving this series, Sierra played one of the original detectives working in the various 12th Greenwich Village precinct in ABC’s “Barney Miller.” After the second season, he left the series to star in “AES Hudson Street,” a comedy about a frantic emergency room, but it lasted only six episodes.
Sierra also appeared as a radical Jewish watchman in “Archie Is Branded,” a 1973 episode of CBS’s “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 in the long series.
Born January 25, 1937 in Spanish Harlem, Sierra attended Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception in Brooklyn. After school, he worked with the National Shakespeare Company and the New York Shakespeare Festival before moving to Los Angeles, where he began earning parts of television and supporting roles in films such as “Beneath the Planet of the Apes “,” Getting Straight “,” Papillon “and” The Towering Inferno “.
She had recurring roles on several television shows, including “Hill Street Blues,” “Miami Vice” and “Murder, She Wrote,” and appeared in a number of other series.
Miami Vice Star Edward James Olmos tweeted who read news of Sierra’s death and wept. “Gregory Sierra will be with us forever,” Olmos wrote. “Those who knew him. His laughter. His ingenuity. His kindness. His extraordinary artistic ability. He was a friend, a mentor, a force of nature with whom I was so grateful to have met and worked. REST IN PEACE.”