Emilio Echevarría, the Mexican actor who played the hitman known as “El Chivo” (The Goat) in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s 2000 film Amores perros and also appeared in Alfonso Cuarón Y tu mamá también (2001) and Iñárritu’s Babel (2006), died Saturday, January 4. He was 80.
His death was announced by the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences. Additional details were not disclosed.
Born Emilio Antonio Echevarría Noriega on July 3, 1944, in Mexico City, Echevarría began his acting career in the late 1970s and he would go on to become a three-time nominee for Mexico’s Ariel Awards.
His breakthrough role came with Amores perros in 2000, followed quickly by Y tu mamá también, the 2002 James Bond film Die Another Day and then, in 2004, John Lee Hancock’s The Alamo. Babel followed in 2006.
Other credits include 1990’s Dying in the Gulf, 2015’s A Monster With A Thousand Heads and 2018’s The Chosen. All three of those performances earned Echevarría an Ariel Award nomination.
Among Echevarría’s most frequent collaborators was Gael García Bernal: In addition to Amores Perros, Y tu mamá también and Babel, the two appeared in the 2015 Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle.
Echevarría is survived by daughter and actress Lourdes Echevarría.
