Fernando Rey
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| Fernando Rey | |
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 Rey in The French Connection |
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| Born | Fernando Casado D'Arambillet September 20, 1917 La Coruña, Spain |
| Died | March 9, 1994 (aged 76) Madrid, Spain |
| Years active | 1935-1994 |
Fernando Casado D'Arambillet, better known as Fernando Rey (September 20, 1917 – March 9, 1994), was a Spanish film, theatre and TV actor, famous in both Europe and the United States.
Rey was born in A Coruña, Spain, the son of Captain Casado Veiga. He studied architecture, but then the Spanish Civil War began, interrupting his university days.
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[edit] Career
In 1936, Rey began his career in movies 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 movies, radio, theater 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 like 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 first international performance was in The Night Heaven Fell (Les bijoutiers du claire de lune) a 1958 French-Italian film directed by Roger Vadim, where he shared cast with Stephen Boyd, Marina Vlady and the then young French sex symbol Brigitte Bardot.
His work with Orson Welles and Luis Buñuel during the 1960s and 1970s made him internationally famous; and he became indeed the first "international Spanish actor". Rey starred in Buñuel's Viridiana; Tristana; and Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) (1972), a complex movie which received the 1972 "Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film", and played too in Welles's Chimes at Midnight (1966).
Another of the successes of Rey-Buñuel's tandem was That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), nominated for another "Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film". It was also nominated for a Golden Globe in the same category, though the movie failed to win either. Rey's voice had to be dubbed by Michel Piccoli.
In Lina Wertmüller’s Academy Award-nominated film, Seven Beauties (1975), Rey played the role of Pedro the anarchist who, as a friend of the protagonist and fellow prisoner, Pasqualino Settebellezze, chooses a gruesome suicide rather than spend another day in a Nazi concentration camp.
Rey played 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: he only knew it was a Spanish actor. Rey was hired before Friedkin could see him. Rey did not speak French and his English was not perfect, but Friedkin discovered that Rabal spoke neither French nor English, and opted to keep Rey, who reprised the role in the less successful 1975 sequel, French Connection II.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Rey was awarded at San Sebastián and Cannes film festivals, and received the gold medal of the Spanish Movie Arts and Sciences Academy. He became the president of this Academy from 1992 until his death from cancer two years later.
[edit] Bibliography
- Cebollada, Pascual (1992). Fernando Rey. Madrid: C.I.L.E.H. ISBN 84-87411-12-6.
- Torres, Augusto M. (1994). Diccionario del cine español. Madrid: Espasa Calpe. ISBN 84-239-9203-9.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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