Tony Dalton plays the villain who is good company: pleasant, unhurried, interested in you, and worse for all of it. Lalo Salamanca made his name outside Mexico, and the question now is whether he can get out from under the part.
Fi1m perspective
What Dalton does is be pleasant. His bad men are affable, they take an interest, and the threat comes from how little effort any of it seems to cost them. That is what most critics noticed in Lalo Salamanca, the part he joined Better Call Saul for in 2018 and stayed with until 2022, and it is what we noticed too. The danger in a Dalton villain is that he appears to be having a nice time.
He had been doing it for years before anyone outside Mexico paid attention. He started in Mexican telenovelas and films in the early 2000s, with Rebelde (2004–2006) and Matando Cabos (2004), which he also co-wrote. He wrote and starred in Sultanes del Sur (2007), and from 2013 to 2018 he led Sr. Ávila as a hitman and crime boss. The charming criminal, in other words, was already his trade; American television simply caught up.
Better Call Saul is the series we rate, and it is the one to watch him in. We admired its patience and its exact comic timing, and Dalton's unpredictability sits well inside that precision, since the show is built on people who know what they are doing and one man who might do anything. We liked Lalo more than we were comfortable with, and the discomfort is the performance: the humanity under the menace is what makes the menace land. From there he went to Marvel, as Jack Duquesne in Hawkeye (2021) and again in Daredevil: Born Again, with an appearance in The Last of Us (2025). We have not reviewed those and will not pretend to a view.
Which brings us to Sugar, where he plays Ray Vega alongside several of his old Better Call Saul colleagues. We found the series nearly very good for two episodes and then thin, with a late turn that went worse, and our review did not find much to say about him, which is its own caveat: a villain part in a show that lost its way is not a showcase for anyone. Dalton has been candid that the offers since Lalo have mostly been cartel leaders and villains, and that he is trying, in his phrase, to bend the ruler without breaking it.
So: see Better Call Saul, and watch what he does with a room full of people who are frightened of him and a smile that never quite explains itself. Then wait, as we are waiting, for someone to cast him as the man on the other side of the table.
Biography
Tony Dalton, also known as Álvaro Luis Bernat Dalton, is an American and Mexican actor. He was born on 13 February 1975 in Laredo, Texas, and grew up in Mexico City. He studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York City.
Dalton began his career with roles in Mexican telenovelas, including Rebelde (2004–2006). His early film work includes Matando Cabos (2004), which he co-wrote, and Sultanes del Sur (2007), which he wrote and starred in. He later appeared in The Perfect Dictatorship (2014) and played the lead in the HBO Latin America series Sr. Ávila (2013–2018), which won the International Emmy Award for Best Non-English Language Series.
He is best known internationally for portraying Lalo Salamanca in Better Call Saul (2018–2022). He has also appeared as Jack Duquesne in the Marvel series Hawkeye (2021) and Daredevil: Born Again (2025–).
