Mexican actor Ignacio López Tarso, who for more than seven decades delighted theater, film and television audiences, died on Saturday. I had 98 years old.
It is with great sadness that we inform you that our dear husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather and leading actor, Ignacio López Tarso, passed away this afternoon, the actor’s family wrote in a post on their Facebook page on Saturday.
“We are a lucky family to have received from him and in all these years his advice, hugs, smiles, support, trust, support and that he has left us today, this enormous legacy. He died peacefully and happy.”, they added, without specifying the causes of his death.
The National Association of Interpreters of Mexico highlighted López Tarso, who was president of the association, as an actor with an extensive career in theater, film and television.
For its part, Mexico’s Ministry of Culture has regretted on its Twitter account the death of one of Mexico’s greatest actors.
His son Juan Ignacio Aranda, who is also an actor, shared with the media that his father was hospitalized earlier this week with pneumonia. Years earlier, López Tarso had been operated on for polyps in his small intestine and a cancerous tumor in his large intestine, as well as stomach problems.
With an imposing physique and an elegant voice, López Tarso was characterized by a versatile career in which he performed with equal success in classical drama as in stories of Mexican revolutionaries or melodramas, always giving his characters a grandiose touch.
His image was immortalized as the peasant Macario, who makes a pact with death, in Roberto Gavaldón’s 1960 film of the same name. But it was in the theater that he achieved success from the 1950s until his last years.
He has shared credits with Silvia Pinal, María Félix and Dolores del Río, as well as Alejandro Jodorowsky, Pedro Armendáriz and Emilio Fernández. López Tarso’s talent has led him to produce eight popular albums in which he performed Mexican corridos and earned him the Ariel de Oro for Lifetime Achievement in 2007.
He was born in Mexico City on January 15, 1925 with the name of Ignacio López López. As a child he entered the seminary to be ordained a priest and there he had his first encounter with the theatre. In the seminary he was in charge of reading to his companions while everyone ate in absolute silence. He read them stories like that of Saul of Tarsus, from which he took his stage name. But eventually his restless nature got the better of him and he ended up leaving the seminary at 17. A year later, he had to do military service and was quartered for a year in 1943.
After his service, he went to work as a farm laborer in California. One day he was in an orange grove he had an accident and fell on some boxes, when he woke up he was in a hospital, but in the United States they couldn’t operate on him, so they sent him back to Mexico with a broken back. Back in the capital, his doctor ordered him eight months of absolute rest, after which he was operated on and had to spend another four months of immobile convalescence.
In that period he discovered the poetry of Xavier Villaurrutia and an advertisement in the newspaper on the courses of the School of Fine Arts Theater, where the poet was precisely one of the teachers. López Tarso thought of bringing him a book for him to sign, but Villaurrutia ended up convincing him to enter the classes as an auditor, some time later encouraging him to register permanently.
At that time he met his late wife Clara Aranda Arana, who helped him define his stage name as López Tarso, after telling her the story of that Roman apostle. With Aranda, he had his children Susana, Gabriela and Juan Ignacio.
Already in the fifties he began to work professionally in theater and television. In 1954, when he was 29, he got his first leading role in Fine Arts with Macbeth, in a version of the Spanish poet León Felipe directed by Celestino Gorostiza with the principal actress Isabela Corona as Lady Macbeth, with which he was applauded to the first. Another of his successes was the lead role in Moctezuma II.
Since my first theatrical job, my central concern was and has been to believe in what I say, to believe in what I do and to believe in the character, said the actor in the book Ignacio López Tarso: Let’s talk about theater written by his daughter Susana and edited by Trilce Ediciones in 2014. Before turning 40, he had made El Cid, Don Juan Tenorio, Enrique IV and the classic Greek dramas, The Spanish Golden Age, but also works by Arthur Miller and the Mexican Rodolfo Usigli.
I think I’ve been very lucky as an actor: I’ve been able to play very good characters. The bigger, the better, he added in the book. An actor’s life is made up of this, the characters he plays.
At the cinema he has made dozens of films, including Macario and El gallo de oro by Roberto Gavaldón; The paper man by Ismael Rodríguez, Pedro Páramo by Carlos Velo and La sombra del caudillo by Julio Bracho. In La Cucaracha he acted with Dolores del Río, Pedro Armendáriz and Emilio Fernández, while in La estrella vacía he alternated with María Félix. Other films by him are Bajo el volcán, by John Huston, and Nazarín, by Luis Buñuel.
On television, he has participated in hundreds of episodes of series and soap operas. He collaborated with the director Raúl Araiza in the historical melodramas La tormenta of 1967, El carruaje of 1972 and Senda de gloria in 1987. In 2012 he made El encanto del águila, a telenovela in which he played Porfirio Díaz.
He returned to share credits with Del Río in the comedy Querido Embuster in 1963 and directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky in The King is Dying, by Eugène Ionesco, in a 1968 production, with sets by plastic artist Leonora Carrington, which Ionesco himself saw and approved .
What’s up Dolly! with Silvia Pinal in 1996 and Twelve Men in Struggle with Odiseo Bichir, Rodrigo Murray and Miguel Rodarte in 2008. His latest productions include El cartero and Un Picasso (date).
Likewise, he recorded records of corridos with the songs that he presented in musical shows throughout Mexico for years. His albums mixed López Tarso’s declamation con mariachi (with mariachi / like mariachi?). Such was the success that he recorded eight albums with CBS and at one point they were his main source of income. They also took him on tour in the United States and shared the stage with José Alfredo Jiménez.
He was president of the National Association of Interpreters of Mexico and general secretary of the National Association of Actors, as well as federal deputy of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in 1988. Among the many recognitions received, a national tribute in Fine Arts in 2006 and an honorary doctorate from the University of Guadalajara in 2013.
Among his most recent credits stand out the series Here on Earth, from 2018, the film Identidad toma 2020 and the miniseries Cien años with Juan Rulfo from 2017. In 2021 he appeared in theaters in Mexico with his son Juan Ignacio in the show Una vita nel theater with which they paid homage to scenic art.
“Here in this theater with my teacher Villaurrutia was where I took my first steps into my first Shakespeare,” he said during the ceremony at Bellas Artes. “Before coming, someone suggested that today in my tribute I announce my retirement, but I see no reason to leave acting, because as long as I feel good, I can walk and talk, I see no reason to retire.”
Source: Clarin
