Biography of Paco Rabal :- Francisco Rabal Valera was born on March 8, 1926 in the Cuesta de Gos, a hamlet of Águilas, Murcia.
Of humble origin (father miner, mother molinera, two brothers), he had six years when the family moved to Madrid, and there he began to help the battered economy of his own with what he won, in the middle of the Civil War, first as a salesman Of candy and then as an apprentice in a chocolate factory.
Biography of Paco Rabal
- Born:- 8 March 1926, Águilas, Spain
- Died:- 29 August 2001, Bordeaux, France
- Spouse:- Asunción Balaguer (m. 1951–2001)
- Children:- Teresa Rabal
- Grand Children:- Luis Rodrigo Rabal, María Rabal
His initiation to the cameras came about thanks to the director Rafael Gil, who in 1946 included him as a supporting actor in two of his films, La pródiga and Reina Santa . In the theater, the recommendations of the poet Dámaso Alonso, the actor Luis Escobar and the director José Tamayo were fundamental.
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In 1947 he joined the cast of the company directed by the latter Lope de Vega, which included the Catalan actress María Asunción Balaguer.
They were married in January 1951, and despite the actor’s confused emotional ups and downs throughout his life, she was his unconditional companion until the last moment.
By this time Rabal was about to make his first theatrical success with Arthur Miller’s The Death of a Traveler . A prominent role that later allowed him to lead the cast in works such as Oedipus King or The Witches of Salem , along with recognized figures such as Analía Gadé, Berta Riaza, Maruchi Fresno, Manuel Dicenta or Andrés Mejuto.
At the same time, he obtained leading roles in major film successes of the time, such as Historias de la radio (1955), José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, or José María Forqué’s Dawn in the Dark Door (1957).
And soon it extended those first steps and inaugurated its international race to the orders of Gillo Pontecorvo in Prisoners of the sea (1957).
A sober and efficient actor, with a serious and dense voice, he attracted the attention of foreign filmmakers, with whom he participated in numerous relevant films. At the end of the decade, his encounter with Luis Buñuel (Nazarín)
1958; Viridiana , 1961) was decisive in his career, which he enjoyed in the following years of his most interesting stage thanks to his work with artists such as Juan Antonio Bardem sonatas , 1959. Seventy times seven , 1963), Carlos Saura ( Lament for a bandit , 1963),
New and fruitful stage
Subsequently, after a period of inflection marked by purely nutritional works that contributed little to such a brilliant curriculum, Rabal resurfaced in its maturity with overwhelming force.
There is a flowery bunch of characters that, with the help of Mario Camus, Gonzalo Suárez, Vicente Aranda, Pedro Almodóvar, José Luis García Sánchez, Arturo Ripstein, Alain Tanner or Carlos Saura, the veteran actor was able to incorporate his visages and make them only his.
From the beginning of the eighties he experienced a resounding renaissance through a series of good films and even better roles that his broken face and his broken voice made unforgettable.
One of them, the great Azzarias of the innocent saints (1984), of Mario Camus, presented an interpretation prize to him in Cannes, and from then on it occupied the right place that required its weight.
Another, that of Goya in Bordeaux (1999), in addition to being worth the award that bears the name of the painter, served as an anticipation for an outstanding artistic trajectory.
No less than forty titles added to his filmography in this last stage of almost feverish activity. And as a counterpart, a life cycle of warrior at rest, of old family patriarch proud of his saga of artists. Of his wife Asuncion, who returned to the arena after many years of remaining in his shadow.
Of its children Benito, director of cinema, and Teresa, singer and actress; Of his grandson, the actor Liberto Rabal, of his great-grandson Daniel.
And of his exuberant memory, generous in anecdotes that delighted his interlocutors and that in his last years he wanted to portray in two books: My verses and my copla and If I told you .
He died on August 29 because of pulmonary emphysema in Bordeaux, aboard the plane where he was returning from Canada, where he had received a prize for the whole of his career at the XXV Films du Monde Festival in Montreal. Upon learning of the vicissitudes of his death, the writer Miguel Delibes concluded:
“In reality, its dynamism was so great that it could not die otherwise than going back and forth.” Another distinction of similar category, the Donostia Prize of the 49th Festival of San Sebastian, which was to be delivered on September 24th, had to be picked up by his grandson, actor Liberto Rabal, in an emotional tribute paid by his friend’s job.
Rabal was seventy-five and had more than fifty films, a medium in which he remained as active as ever and gave him the greatest satisfaction through the recognition of directors and critics and the palpable affection of the public, of His relatives and all his colleagues.
His artistic and personal maturity coincided with the most creative and fruitful period of his long career. Self-made actor, with the techniques he learned from the trade and life and owner of a portentous memory, had stopped interpreting to apprehend each character and incorporate it into his way of being.
It gave an unmistakable Paco Rabal that the magic of clothes and lights converted and multiplied in resounding presence, full of vitality.
Of course, he had completely lost his physical position, which in his youth had left him so many doors, especially in his rapid international projection towards an author’s cinema, which placed him at a level of fame and prestige unheard of for a Spanish actor.
But with his good plant there was also a certain propensity to declaim – which found a better fate in his recitals of poetry – and the insecurity that, after a stage of low brightness, produced the scars that an accident left on his face.