Eli Wallach

NEW YORK — As a masterful character actor and early product of postwar, Method-style theater, Eli Wallach wore countless faces, disappearing into them all. But he was always propelled — in acting and in life — by a mischievousness and an abiding playfulness that made him a tireless performer, an enduring family man and, of course, one immortal scoundrel.

“I never lost my appetite for acting,” Wallach wrote in his 2005 memoir “The Good, the Bad, and Me,” named after his most famous film. “I feel like a magician.”

Wallach died Tuesday evening from natural causes after 98 years of life, 66 years of marriage and some 100 films, including several he made in his 90s.

The versatile, raspy-voiced actor was a mainstay of Tennessee Williams’ plays and an original member of the Actors Studio. But the most notable credit in his prolific career was “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” in which he played the rascally Mexican outlaw Tuco.

As the Ugly of the title, he stole Sergio Leone’s 1966 spaghetti Western from the Good, Clint Eastwood, with lines like: “When you have to shoot, shoot, don’t talk.”