Imagine the tales this man could tell.....

Apparently, from a gossip site with a remarkable percentage of accuracy, he has quite an interesting past prior to acting. But since it is a gossip site I won't spread more detail other to add that his tough guy act was not necessarily an act - he was a tough guy.

Great documentary! I’ve watched it several times and Silva was definitely one of the highlights.

I had lunch with him once back in 2010 and was lucky enough to interview him as well. He was actually a really kind old guy but a little finicky. He said he was excited to go out and act in a few features (which excited me and some filmmaker friends of mine) but then he later stated that he expected to be paid tens of thousands of dollars which none of us had at the time. Silva was a nice guy but did not do anything for free. It's kind of a bummer of a missed opportunity actually, as he was mentally sharp all the way up to the end, though he was extremely frail and could barely walk even when I last met up with him in 2010. He had an inner ear problem a year or so later which made it so he could not balance and had to be carted around in a wheelchair, but was still perfectly capable of holding conversations.

I do remember him pining over missing Frank Sinatra quite a bit. He even said one time he heard a Sinatra song playing on the radio and briefly got excited thinking his old friend was nearby.

He also said that he and Woody Strode were great friends and that their interpersonal chemistry was the reason they were cast in so many movies together. He got really sad talking about him.

Oddly enough while we were eating lunch at Madeo's in Beverly Hills, Magic Johnson came in and sat at the table next to us and the two of them actually knew each other! There was one good "Silva Moment" we had during lunch when he pointed to a woman brushing her hair at another table and went on a brief rant about how unsanitary it was for her to brush her hair over her food. He said something like "If I was the guy with her, I'd say you can cut that out right now you F-ing B---. HAHAH. No, I wouldn't actually say that.... but I'd be thinking it!". For those 10 seconds he was exactly like Ray Vargo or one of the villain characters he played in a Steven Seagal or Chuck Norris movie. Shows you what kind of acting he was still capable of even if he seemed like otherwise a sweet old man.