Kamar de los Reyes, a TV, movie and voice actor best known for playing a villain in the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops II, has died in Los Angeles aged 56, his family has said.
De los Reyes died on Christmas Eve following a short battle with cancer, Lisa Goldberg, a publicist for his wife, Sherri Saum, said in a statement.
As well as his work on the game popularly known as “COD”, he also appeared in a ground-breaking soap opera and in movies alongside Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Lopez.
Kamar de los Reyes with his wife Sherri Saum in Los Angeles in 2020. Pic: AP
The statement said he “lived in Los Angeles, however, his heart never left Puerto Rico,” and he had been active in the recovery efforts after Hurricane Maria which struck the island in 2017.
De los Reyes was born in San Juan, the capital of the Caribbean island in 1967 and raised in Las Vegas, according to a biography provided by his family, which said he caught the acting bug when he arrived in Los Angeles in the late 1980s.
Early roles included playing Pedro Quinn in the 1994 off-Broadway play, Blade to the Heat, and Ferdinand in director George C Wolfe’s acclaimed production of The Tempest for Shakespeare in the Park, in 1995.
His big break came that year, when he was cast as Antonio Vega, a former gang member, turned lawyer and police officer, in long-running soap opera, One Life To Live.
The ground-breaking show was the first US daytime drama to primarily feature ethnically and socioeconomically diverse characters and consistently emphasise social issues.
He appeared in the show for more than a decade.
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In the popular video game Call of Duty: Black Ops II, he played Raul Menendez, portraying the villain in several different editions of the franchise, starting in 2012.
His silver screen credits included playing a Watergate burglar in Oliver Stone’s Richard Nixon biopic, Nixon, as well as roles in The Cell, starring Jennifer Lopez and Salt, with Angelina Jolie, both in the 2000s.
Other TV roles were in Sleepy Hollow, The Rookie and All American, the show he was filming when he died, the family said.
He had recently shot parts in Marvel’s upcoming Daredevil series and Hulu’s yet to be released Washington Black, starring Sterling K Brown, his family said.
De los Reyes is survived by his actress wife, Sherri Saum, whom he married in 2007, and three sons, Caylen, 26, and twins Michael and John, who are nine.