Rita Terranova, the quiet actress: “If a function goes wrong, nothing happens, only my ego is broken”

Carrier of theatrical chromosomes, she says hers is a birth surrounded by beautiful scenery. Son of actors Beatriz Doré and Osvaldo Terranova, family legend suggests that it was the very first actress Luisa Vehil who gave her a bassinet and China Zorrilla (a friend and compatriot of her mother) traveled from Uruguay especially to get to know him. Her parents chose a short name for her, not only to honor her grandmother, but also out of the belief that the four letters added to the surname “sounded perfect for a marquee.”

Rita Terranova rethought her story and understood that there is no other possible route. Her mother “tried to slow delivery as much as possible” so that the child’s father came to the clinic on time, the official day off for artists, a Monday. Finally, on Monday, August 6, 1956, in Otamendi, the sanatorium bed became a table of praise for the eldest. Her father, who was overjoyed, went to her accompanied by a motivator, Mr. Adalberto Tacagni, who would be with Rita on television.

The film archive of his TV debut at the age of five is missing, but not his “internal recorder.” The tape recalls his memory of being with his father on Channel 13, until he crossed the other side of the threshold and “accidentally” opened the screen. “Dad has the cycle To AlexanderAnd so that I would not be jealous of the birth of that prince who was my brother, he invited me to his work. At one point, said producer Carmelo Santiago, Niní Marshall’s stepson ‘The woman will present the drawing’. And I stood up and introduced myself the super rat“.

He grew up in Villa Crespo, in an apartment with a balcony frequented by those “black and white” artists who owned a period. One day I saw Roberto Durán enter, another Juan Carlos Gené, another Don Eugenio Filippelli. There is no escape: in that environment where his father explains to him how he developed his characters and how to approach a scene, which told his first big lie at the age of 12.

“I swore I was going to go to gym classes at the Buenos Aires school in Villa Crespo, but I was going to go to theater classes,” he smiled, filled with emotion. “When dad found out the truth, he talked to Alejandra Boero and I started studying with her. She was too young for that course, Alejandra did not know what to do with me, but I told her so much: ‘If I wasn’t an actor, I would die’“.

The first character entrusted to her by Boero, the founder of the New Theater, for a show was that of Anne Frank. Soon, he made his public debut in The tent of the town of Hugo del Carril, in the Picadero theater area. At 16, she auditioned in San Martín to get into the dance corps of the imaginary patient Y he became home to San Martín, as well as Alvear.

“I didn’t say my last name first. ‘I’m just Rita,’ I replied. I was afraid that they would give me the papers just to be Osvaldo’s son. “, he admits. “One day, in Xirgu, a producer saw me as a clown and he called me to do it on television. love has a woman’s face. Then came the first TV star, bride on vacationwith Miguel Ángel Solá, at 13 “.

Because of that soap opera every week I received 100 letters at the station, which I tried to answer in my own handwriting. As a result, he experienced sudden popularity, an instance that seemed inconsistent with his way of being in the world. “I was embarrassed by the fame, started saying things like people ‘lighten your hair’, usually when they start to see you as a product. I don’t whiten or change and they keep calling me. “

Don Terranova did not see great success in his daughter’s acting. He died suddenly in 1984. He endured dictatorial bans, a time when heiress Rita brought the plate of food home. “We lived through that time with anguish, he went through it with shame, and his friends gave me work. I didn’t even want to touch the money and sent mom to collect,” he evokes with a broken voice. “However, dad would still go around, but he always had a bomb threat in the room. Until the blacklist turned gray and then white. The last time I saw him, he had seen a program of mine. He touched my cheek and said: ‘Keep that up, daughter.’ “

He remembers with amazement the 1991 blockbuster in which he co-starred on Channel 9, You reap what you sow, during the export soap opera where a town was built in the area of ​​old Puerto Madero. His own bench mate at school, Omar Romay, called him for that story Rita ended up being dubbed into Italian and Hebrew. He was already touched by the international in 1985, when he was selected by the son of the Spanish Luis Buñuel, Juan Luis Buñuel, among the 500 actors for the French film. Tropics of Crab. María Luisa Bemberg herself spoke to the director about that quiet woman who became the scene.

“If a function goes wrong, it only damages your ego,” he repeats, as if trying not to forget his mantra. All his life he has struggled to remove ballast, that “muscle” or body extension of artists that might make them believe they are a few steps taller than a firefighter or a nurse. “If you don’t show off, nothing happens, but if a surgeon makes a bad procedure it can kill; If an architect doesn’t plan well, his building can collapse, ” preaching from that sect of high level of production and low profile. “Can you imagine Favaloro after a transplant, waiting for the ovation, greeting the audience?”

-Did your modesty occur as a product of a certain shyness?

-Naturally that happened, I was a little embarrassed to stand out. Sometimes I don’t even greet the critic and I’m away, not because I’m not pleasant, but out of fear that they might think I want to take advantage of it. I like that they say that I don’t look like an actor, that I transform on stage.

-The good location of the ego …

-I always remember that when a function goes wrong, it only damages my ego, but if a mason does not cling to his scaffolding, he will die. The actor often exaggerates. What is it about treating your wife and kids badly when you have a premiere? I’ve seen artists hysterical critics. It doesn’t suit me to believe we are superior. Maybe because I was born into a family of artists and I saw my father as a different person who in everyday life is like everyone else.

A generation blocked him on the street reminding him of the childhood cycle of ATC his corpse, Requetepillos, by Maria Herminia Avellaneda. Others have applauded his work as a director since 2000. He has participated in nearly 100 works and more than 30 television products, although his passion for silence has removed him from the media spotlight. He understood that from the beginning “An actor is a person who one day eats a bird and another day eats a feather” and that’s why he chooses “a strict lifestyle”: “I always lived the same, when I earned a lot or a little”, he explains now that he shows off with kitchen of babela piece he wrote with Patricia Suárez and directed in El Tinglado, a comedy that mixed fable and carnival with 14 actors, including his daughter, Renata Marrone.

In a relationship with Guillermo, a great confectioner, he often entertains Welsh cakes, a specialty he learned at a shoot in Puerto Madryn and where he keeps Terranova’s grandparents, Sicilians who stand out as confectioners in Villaguay, Entre Ríos. The sweetness seems to be the mark on the selvedge: “On balance, I’ve made great characters … from García Lorca to Molière, but I think I like something from Tennessee Williams, The rose tattoo The glass menagerie. I’m still on time, I think. Acting and being different helps me understand others better. “