Vincent Schiavelli

Schiavelli was born in Brooklyn, New York City to Sicilian-Americans John Schiavelli and Katherine Coco. He attended Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn. He was raised in the large Sicilian neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn; the stories and recipes of which he shared in his 1998 book Bruculinu, Remembrances of Sicilian American Brooklyn. He studied acting through the theatre program at New York University and began performing on stage in the 1960s. Schiavelli's first film role occurred in Miloš Forman's 1971 production Taking Off, where he played a counselor who taught parents of runaway teens to smoke marijuana to better understand their children's experiences. Schiavelli's aptitude and distinctive appearance soon provided him with a steady stream of supporting roles, often in Forman's films, including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Valmont, and the 1999 biopic Man on the Moon.

He played Mr. Vargas, the biology teacher, in the 1982 comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a role he reprised in the 1986 television spin-off Fast Times. He was cast in a similar role in Better Off Dead in which he played Mr. Kerber, a geometry teacher.

In 1987, he starred alongside Tim Conway in the short film comedy Dorf on Golf, and then Dorf and the First Games of Mount Olympus in 1988. In 1990, he played the Subway Ghost in Ghost and in 1992, he played in Tim Burton's Batman Returns as the "Organ Grinder", one of the Penguin's henchmen. He appeared as another villain in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), as a silent monk in The Frisco Kid (1979), and as John O'Connor, one of the evil Red Lectroids in 1984's The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. In 1994 he appeared in the music video for ZZ Top's "Breakaway", alongside Fairuza Balk and in 1997, was named one of America's best character actors by Vanity Fair magazine. He also made several voice appearances in the animated television show Hey Arnold!. In 2002, he played a children's television show host turned heroin addict named Buggy Ding Dong in Death to Smoochy.

His first television role came in 1972 as Peter Panama in The Corner Bar, the first sustained portrayal of a gay character on American television. His other television credits include The Moneychangers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, WKRP in Cincinnati, Benson, and Taxi as the priest who marries Latka and Simka. He appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Arsenal of Freedom" as a holographic salesman, on Miami Vice as a research scientist who conspires to steal a top-secret prototype weapon from his employer, and in an uncredited role in an episode of Punky Brewster. In 1987 he appeared as Lyle, a gangster, in the MacGyver season 2 episode "Soft Touch". In Highlander: The Series, he played Leo Atkins, a homeless Vietnam War veteran accused of murder in the Season 1 episode "Innocent Man". In The X-Files, he played Lanny, a man with an underdeveloped conjoined twin in the Season 2 episode "Humbug".

Schiavelli was honorary co-chair of the National Marfan Foundation, an organization that serves those affected by Marfan syndrome, a condition that Schiavelli had.

Schiavelli also performed in a few video games, including Emperor: Battle for Dune (as Harkonnen Mentat Yanich Kobal) and as Dr. Hellman in the video game Corpse Killer.