Suárez and his sister were born into a middle-class family and raised in the Santurce section of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

In 1947, Ballester told the elder Suárez that he was in need of an 8-year-old for the protagonist role in a play that he wrote because the person he had in mind didn't pass the audition.

Afterward the artistic class in the island went through a crisis, and because he was unable to get an acting job, Suarez went to Argentina, where he was given a role in the soap opera Amor Gitano (Gypsy Love).

In 1980, he played an inmate in the TV movie Escape, partially filmed in Puerto Rico, with Timothy Bottoms and Colleen Dewhurst.

He then went to Hollywood, and in 1980, landed a role in the movie Stir Crazy, directed by Sidney Poitier starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder.

[3] On 4 April 2010, his cremated remains where interred in a family plot located in Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery in Old San Juan.