Montalban died Wednesday morning at his Los Angeles home of complications related to old age, said his son-in-law, Gilbert Smith.
Within the entertainment industry, Montalban was widely respected for his efforts to create opportunities for Latinos, although he and others believed that his activism hurt his career. In 1970, he founded the nonprofit Nosotros Foundation to improve the image and increase employment of Latinos in Hollywood.
“He paved the way for being outspoken about the images and roles that Latinos were playing in movies," said Luis Reyes, co-author of “Hispanics in Hollywood" (2000).
On Wednesday, actor Edward James Olmos called Montalban “one of the true giants of arts and culture."
“He was a stellar artist and a consummate person and performer with a tremendous understanding of culture . . . and the ability to express it in his work," Olmos told The Times.
Montalban was already a star of Mexican movies in the 1940s when MGM cast him as a bullfighter opposite Esther Williams in Fiesta and put him under contract. He would go on to appear alongside such movie greats as Clark Gable and Lana Turner.
When major film roles dried up for him in the 1970s, he turned to stage and eventually TV, where he was familiar to millions as the mysterious host whose signature line, Welcome to Fantasy Island, opened the hit ABC show that aired from 1978 to 1984.
While Fantasy Island was renewing Montalban's career and giving him financial stability, he also won an Emmy for his performance as Chief Satangkai in the 1978 ABC miniseries How the West Was Won.
In the 1970s and '80s, Montalban was also familiar to TV viewers as a commercial spokesman for Chrysler. He was later widely spoofed for his silky allusion to the soft Corinthian leather of the Chrysler Cordoba, although no such leather actually existed.
While making Fantasy Island, Montalban also gave one of his best movie performances -- as Khan Noonien Singh in the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), a follow-up to a beloved 1967 Star Trek television episode that also featured Montalban.
