Francisco Rabal

Acting

Born Mar 08, 1926

From Águilas, Murcia, Región de Murcia, Spain

Died Aug 29, 2001

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Francisco Rabal (March 8, 1926 – August 29, 2001), perhaps better known as Paco Rabal, was a Spanish actor born in Águilas, a small town in the province of Murcia, Spain. In 1936, after the Spanish Civil War broke out. Rabal and his family left Murcia and moved to Madrid. Young Francisco had to work as a street salesboy and in a chocolate factory. When he was 13 years old, he left school to work as an electrician at Estudios Chamartín. Rabal got some sporadic jobs as an extra. Dámaso Alonso and other people advised him to try his luck with a career in theater. During the following years, he got some roles in theater companies such as Lope de Vega or María Guerrero. It was there that he met actress Asunción Balaguer; they married and remained together for the rest of Rabal's life. Their daughter, Teresa Rabal, is also an actor. In 1947, Rabal got some regular jobs in theater. He used his full name, Francisco Rabal, as stage name. However, the people who knew him always called him Paco Rabal. (Paco is the familiar form for Francisco.) "Paco Rabal" became his unofficial stage name. During the 1940s, Rabal began acting in movies as an extra, but it was not until 1950 that he was first cast in speaking roles, and played romantic leads and rogues. He starred in three films directed by Luis Buñuel - Nazarín (1959), Viridiana (1961) and Belle de jour (1967). William Friedkin thought of Rabal for the French villain of his 1971 movie The French Connection. However, he could not remember the name of "that Spanish actor". Mistakenly, his staff hired another Spanish actor, Fernando Rey. Friedkin discovered that Rabal did not speak English or French, so he decided to keep Rey. Rabal has previously worked with Rey in Viridiana. Rabal did, however, work with Friedkin in the much less successful but Academy Award-nominated cult classic Sorcerer (1977), a remake of The Wages of Fear (1953). Throughout his career, Rabal worked in France, Italy and Mexico with directors such as Gillo Pontecorvo, Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Visconti, Valerio Zurlini, Jacques Rivette and Alberto Lattuada. It is widely considered that Rabal's best performances came after Francisco Franco's death on 1975. In the 1980s, Rabal starred in Los santos inocentes, winning the Award as Best Actor in Cannes Film Festival, in El Disputado Voto del Señor Cayo and also in the TV series Juncal. In 1989, he was a member of the jury at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival. In the 1999 he played the character of Francisco Goya in Carlos Saura Goya en Burdeos, winning a Goya Award as Best Actor. Francisco Rabal is the only Spanish actor to have received a honoris causa doctoral degree from the University of Murcia. Rabal's final movie was Dagon, a film which was dedicated to him right before the credits. The dedication read "Dedicated to Francisco Rabal, a wonderful actor and even better human being." Rabal died in 2001 from compensatory dilating emphysema, while on an airplane travelling to Bordeaux, when he was coming back from receiving an Award at Montreal Film Festival. Description above from the Wikipedia article Francisco Rabal, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Francisco Rabal

Known For

Sorcerer

Crooks

Belle de Jour

Viridiana

Dagon

Little Bird

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

Stay as You Are

Nazarín

L'Eclisse

Filmography — Acting

Sorcerer

Crooks

Belle de Jour

Viridiana

Dagon

Little Bird

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

Stay as You Are

Nazarín

L'Eclisse

The Witches

Airbag

One Hundred and One Nights

Hotel Fear

The Nun

It Can Be Done Amigo

The Desert of the Tartars

Camorra (A Story of Streets, Women and Crime)

The Holy Innocents

A Time of Destiny

Nightmare City

Land Without Bread

Le avventure e gli amori di Miguel Cervantes

On Earth as It Is in Heaven

Death of a Cyclist

I Am the Law

Eagles Over London

Sonatas

Oedipus Mayor

Counselor at Crime

Corleone

Io sono mia

The Hand in the Trap

Treasure of the Four Crowns

The Blue Panther

Simón Bolívar

The Tempter

Speed Driver

Legacy of the Incas

Eye of the Cat

The Beehive

Traficantes Del Panico

Weeping for a Bandit

Tiempo de silencio

Speaking of Buñuel

Hunted City

Currito de la Cruz

Goya in Bordeaux

Reborn

Scent of a Crime

Don Quixote

Cutting Heads

N.P. - The Secret

The Wide Blue Road

Death Will Have Your Eyes

Divine

Bloody Che Contra

La Lola se va a los puertos

Blood in the Bullring

Tormento

The Challenges

L'uomo dai calzoni corti

Divine Words

El hombre de la isla

La novia de medianoche

Just Run!

Ann and Eve