Fernando Rey

He achieved his greatest fame after he turned 50: "Perhaps it is a pity that my success came so late in life", he told the Los Angeles Times. "It might have been better to have been successful while young, like El Cordobés in the bullring. Then your life is all before you to enjoy it."

Fernando Rey studied at Complutense University of Madrid. The recorded working language is Spanish. Positions recorded include President of the Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences. Distinctions recorded are Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor, Goya Award for Best Actor, Castelao Medal and Silver Shell for Best Actor.

• Name — Fernando Rey • Born — 20 September 1917 • Birthplace — A Coruña, Galicia, Spain • Died — 9 March 1994 • Place of death — Madrid, Spain • Birth Name — Fernando Casado Arambillet • Years Active — 1935–1994 • Occupation — Actor • Children — 2 • Awards — Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor 1977 Elisa, vida mía

Rey was born in A Coruña, Spain, the son of Fernando Casado Veiga and Sara Arambillet Rey. He studied architecture, but the Spanish Civil War interrupted his university studies. Rey and his father, an army colonel, fought on the side of the Loyalists against the forces of Francisco Franco. His family was wealthy, but by the end of the war they were impoverished. His father was sentenced to death after the war, but the sentence was suspended. • Illustration — Fernando Rey with Silvia Pinal in Viridiana, in the cover of the film script book.

In 1936, Rey began his career in films as an extra, sometimes even getting credited. It was then that he chose his stage name, Fernando Rey. He kept his first name, but took his mother's second surname, Rey, a short surname with a clear meaning ("Rey" is Spanish for "King"). In 1944, his first speaking role was the Duke of Alba in José López Rubio's Eugenia de Montijo. Four years later, he acted the part of Felipe I el Hermoso, King of Spain, in the Spanish cinema blockbuster Locura de amor. This was the start of a prolific career in film (he played in around two hundred films), radio, theatre, and television. Rey was also a great dubbing actor in Spanish television. His voice was considered intense and personal, and he became the narrator of important Spanish movies including Luis García Berlanga's Bienvenido Mr. Marshall (1953), Ladislao Vajda's Marcelino Pan y Vino (1955), and even the 1992 re-dubbed version of Orson Welles' Don Quixote. In fact, Rey acted in four different film versions of Don Quixote in different roles, if one counts the Welles version (for which Rey supplied offscreen narration in the final scene). His brilliant performance in the role of a demotivated and doubtful actor in Juan Antonio Bardem's Cómicos (1954), while showing him for the first time in a successful lead part, paradoxically, as he saw himself as the real incarnation of the role, plunged him in a professional depression, of which he did not emerge until his collaboration with Luis Buñuel several years later. However, in the short term, Buñuel's disconcerting public remark on Rey's performance in another of Bardem's film, Sonatas (1959), "I love how this actor plays a corpse", could only increase Rey's apprehensions. Nevertheless, eventually Rey became Buñuel's preferred actor and closest friend.

• Illustration — Fernando Rey with Gloria Grahame in Tarot (The Magician, 1973). Rey's first international performance was in The Night Heaven Fell (Les bijoutiers du clair de lune) a 1958 French-Italian film directed by Roger Vadim, where he acted alongside Stephen Boyd, Marina Vlady and Brigitte Bardot. Previously he had played in an American TV series, It happens in Spain, the story of the exploits of a private detective, operating out in Spain, who helps distressed American tourists. In 1959, Rey co-starred with Steve Reeves and Christine Kaufmann in the Italian sword and sandal film The Last Days of Pompeii. In 1961 Rey played in a European Western, The Savage Guns, and as the popularity of that genre increased during that decade appeared in some other movies, including the political The Price of Power (1969), the cult classic Compañeros, and two sequels of The Magnificent Seven, namely Return of the Seven (1966) and Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969). It was his work with Orson Welles and Luis Buñuel during the 1960s and 1970s that made Rey internationally prominent; becoming the first 'international Spanish actor.' Rey starred in Buñuel's Viridiana (1961), Tristana (1970), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie) (1972) (a surreal movie which received the 1972 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film) and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977). For Welles, Rey performed in two completed films, Chimes at Midnight (1966) and The Immortal Story (1968). Rey played memorably the French villain Alain Charnier in William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971). Initially, Friedkin intended to cast Francisco Rabal as Charnier, but could not remember his name after seeing him in Luis Buñuel's Belle de jour; he only knew the person he had in mind was a Spanish actor who had worked with Buñuel. Rey was hired after he flew to New York to be met by a surprised Friedkin. Rey's English and French were not perfect, but Friedkin discovered that Rabal spoke neither of them, and opted to keep Rey, who reprised the role in the less successful sequel, French Connection II (1975). Along 1970s and 1980s Rey played in many international co-productions, some of his appearances being cameos. These films include Lewis Gilbert's The Adventurers (1970), Mauro Bolognini's Drama of the Rich (1974), Vincente Minnelli's A Matter of Time (1976), Valerio Zurlini's The Desert of the Tartars (1976), Robert Altman's Quintet (1979), J. Lee Thompson's Caboblanco (1980) and Frank Perry's Monsignor (1982). One of Rey's greater successes in these years was Elisa, vida mía, a 1977 Spanish drama film written and directed by Carlos Saura. On his work in Stuart Rosenberg's Voyage of the Damned (1976), Rey once said: "I played [Cuban] president Brú; a cameo. They paid me a lot of money for less than six hours of shooting, in the Barcelona Stock Exchange building, with James Mason. I got more money than Orson Welles, who played a great role...".

• Illustration — Fernando Rey, as Don Quixote, with Alfredo Landa, as Sancho Panza, in El Quijote de Miguel de Cervantes (1992). In later years, Rey preferred to work in Spain, with successes as Francisco Regueiro's Padre Nuestro (1985), José Luis Cuerda's El bosque animado (1987) and Jaime de Armiñán's Al otro lado del túnel (1992) as well as his portrayal of Don Quixote, alongside Alfredo Landa as Sancho Panza, in the memorable Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón's El Quijote de Miguel de Cervantes (1992) for Televisión Española. His last appearance on the screen was in a supporting role in the Spanish black comedy El cianuro... ¿sólo o con leche? (Cyanide... pure or with milk?) (1994).

In 1960, Rey married Argentine actress Mabel Karr. They had a son, Fernando Casado Campolongo. In 1992, he became chairman of the Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España succeeding Antonio Giménez-Rico. He died of bladder cancer in Madrid on 9 March 1994. He was survived by his wife, who died in 2001.