Ricardo Montalbán died on January 14, 2009 in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 88. He was a devoted Catholic and once said that his faith was the “most important thing” in his life.
In 1998, Pope John Paul II made him a Knight Commander of St. Gregory, the highest honor bestowed upon non-clergy in the Roman Catholic Church.
I know that I read somewhere about him turning down roles, or asking that the steaminess of roles be turned down, because he felt that acting in “love scenes” would be an act of unfaithfulness of his wife.
Hollywood is full of stories about what a gentleman he was, how fair and how unassuming. Here is a note from the voice acting community, via Livejournal:
Interesting side note; when the decision was made to hire Ricardo Montalban to voice Armand Guitierrez in “Freakazoid!”, from what I understand, the staff on the show (and correct me if you know otherwise, Mr. D!) were prepared to “back up the truck” and offer him whatever it cost to get him to play the role–only to be pleasantly surprised when he told them he didn’t want to be paid one cent more than anyone else in the voice cast, as they had worked long and hard to learn their craft, while he, in his opinion, was just a guy with a nice voice and some acting skill, but no voice acting work beyond Chrysler commercials in the early 80s.
(Which leads to noting that, apparently, he was a consummate professional, always showing up to every recording session well ahead of schedule and never complaining if asked for a different read or if the script had some jokes that might have come off as gentle mocking. From what I’ve heard, the producers on Kim Possible had exactly the same experience, though in the later seasons, they had to have Neil Ross fill in for him when Montalban was too ill to make sessions.)
– cite