Antonio Fargas

Antonio Fargas is an American actor born on August 14, 1946, in New York City. He was one of eleven children born to Mildred (née Bailey) and Manuel Fargas. His father, who was Puerto Rican, worked for the City of New York, while his mother was from Trinidad and Tobago. Fargas grew up in Spanish Harlem and graduated from Fashion Industries High School in 1965.

Fargas began his Broadway career in 1968, appearing in productions including The Great White Hope and The Roast, with his stage work continuing through 1980. His screen career gained momentum with the 1969 comedy film Putney Swope, which served as his breakout role. He went on to appear in several blaxploitation films in the early 1970s, among them Across 110th Street (1972) and Foxy Brown (1974). His most widely recognized role came with the television series Starsky & Hutch, in which he portrayed streetwise informant Huggy Bear throughout the 1970s.

In 1982, Fargas joined the cast of the daytime drama All My Children, playing Les Baxter, an upper-class lawyer and the father of Angie Hubbard. The character was written out of the series in 1987. He later appeared in the blaxploitation spoof I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988) and the Wayans brothers parody Don't Be a Menace (1996). During the mid-1990s, he made guest appearances on the sitcoms Living Single, Martin, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and The Steve Harvey Show. Fargas also appeared in two Backstreet Boys music videos, playing the driver in "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" (1997) and appearing as a robot in "Larger than Life" (1999).

From 2005 to 2009, Fargas held a recurring role as Doc on the television series Everybody Hates Chris. His British television appearances include Series 4 of the reality series I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! in 2004 and Frank Sidebottom's Proper Telly Show in early 2006. That same year, he played the role of Toledo in a revival of August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. In 2008, he appeared in the British boxing film Sucker Punch, and he guest-starred in an episode of Fox's Lie to Me as the father of a murdered firefighter.

Fargas's son Justin Fargas, a University of Southern California alumnus, played seven seasons as a running back for the Oakland Raiders, accumulating over 3,000 rushing yards during his NFL career. Fargas's daughter-in-law is Nikki Caldwell, the president of the Las Vegas Aces of the WNBA.