Taylor Negron

Best known for his sardonic performances in movies like "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (1982) and "The Last Boy Scout" (1991), Taylor Negron got his first taste of stardom when he made his stand-up debut at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles in 1977.

The California native was only 15 years old at the time, but he was already preoccupied with inclinations toward painting and drawing and had even begun earning his own money working as an extra on movie sets when his performance unexpectedly brought down the house. Negron soon dropped out of high school and enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute to study painting, but left by the time he was 19 to pursue his career as a performer full time. Negron began training as an actor at the famed Actor's Studio, where he worked as a personal assistant for Lee Strasberg himself.

Negron was young and impetuous, challenging the venerated teacher and occasionally arguing, but Negron would later remark that the experience was formative for him. He would get a chance to learn from another legend when Lucille Ball was brought in to act as a guest teacher at the Sherwood Oaks Experimental College, and Negron was assigned to be her intern. Negron also took a private seminar from Ball on the topic of comedy, describing her later as having taught him the value of being a knowledgeable professional on set, something she had learned from her own mentor, Buster Keaton. This period found Negron scraping by with a mixed bag of paying gigs, such as a string of nine appearances on the popular show "The Dating Game" (ABC, 1965-1986).

He also spent this time working in the stand-up comedy scene with contemporaries like Robin Williams and Sam Kinison, developing the non-traditional but undeniably biting style that would become his trademark. Negron's big break as an actor finally came in 1979, when he was cast as Silvio Galindez on the series "Detective School" (ABC, 1979-1979). More prominent roles soon followed, including a memorable turn as an unimpressed pizza delivery boy in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (1982). This part would be the first in a total of three separate movies that found Negron playing pizza guys, the other two being "Bio-Dome" (1996) and "Vamps" (2012), a funny phenomenon that Negron would call his "Trilogy of Pizza Men."

Negron would find no shortage of steady work as an actor throughout the coming decades, delighting audiences with comedic appearances in movies like "Bad Medicine" (1985) and "How I Got Into College" (1989). He would also make numerous TV appearances, with iconic turns as a New York hairdresser on an episode of "Seinfeld" (NBC, 1989-1998) and an overly fastidious waiter on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (HBO, 1999-). The actor would also resist typecasting, playing a psychotic villain against Bruce Willis in the action thriller "The Last Boy Scout" (1991). Though his acting career took off, Negron continued to flourish in other areas as well. He became an accomplished playwright, penning a number of plays that were performed around Los Angeles such as "Who Loves You, Baby?" and "Gangster Planet." He also continued to find success as a painter, with works displayed at the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles. Negron died of liver cancer on January 10, 2015. He was 57 years old.