Pleasantly surprised to see Steven Bauer in Ray Donovan

Steven Bauer appears in 60 episodes of the Ray Donovan series (2013-17). He plays Ray’s right-hand man Avi, a former Israeli commando.

He’s one of the two characters who get stuck doing much of Ray’s dirty work.

Esteban Ernesto Echevarría

Born Esteban Ernesto Echevarría in Havana, Cuba, on December 2, 1956, he used three screen names during his 44-year acting career – and still counting. In addition to Steven Bauer, he’s also been billed as Rocky Bauer and Rocky Echevarría. His nickname’s Rocky.

Movies

I first remember him as Manny Ribera in 1983’s Scarface. Who can ever forget the chain-saw scene in the shower?

From there, saw him in two more movies – Running Scared (1986) and Primal Fear (1996).

TV Crime Series

Also saw him recently in three of my favorite crime series – the aforementioned Ray Donovan. Plus he played Mexican drug lord Don Eladio in 2 episodes of Breaking Bad (2011) and 3 episodes of Better Call Saul (2017-2022).

Between me and you, I watch episodes from those series every week – plus Dexter.

Steven Bauer is a handsome dude. Someone told me he got fat, but he’s wearing a bathing suit in several scenes around the swimming pool. He looked pretty good for a 55-year-old man.

Miscellaneous

He appeared in one episode of the series Goliath (2018). I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s on my watch-list.

He also appeared in the 1998 movie The Versace Murder. I missed the movie. But, ironically, that’s one of the cases that made me stop writing murder stories for True Detective magazine – after writing more than 100.

The magazine accepted three of my queries at that time:

  • The Gianni Versace case.
  • Brookhaven’s Aimee Willard – murdered by Arthur Bomar on the Media Bypass in 1996.
  • Megan Kanka – the little girl whose rape and murder in 1994 was responsible for the enactment of Megan’s Law.

I researched all three stories – even went to Megan’s home in New Jersey and visited the scene of the crime – but I never finished the stories. All the mayhem and violence that people inflict on one another finally got to me.

So I switched to crime fiction – which as Conway Twitty once said – is only make believe.

106240cookie-checkPleasantly surprised to see Steven Bauer in Ray Donovan