Fernando Rey

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Fernando Casado D'Arambillet, known as Fernando Rey, (September 20, 1917 - March 9, 1994) was a Spanish film actor famous in both Europe and the United States.

Rey was born in A Coruña, Spain, then known as La Coruña, the son of Colonel Casado Veiga. He studied architecture, but then the Spanish Civil War began, interrupting his university days.

In 1936, he 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 he 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 de Alba in José López Rubio's Eugenia de Montijo.

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 (1992). In fact, he acted in four different versions of Don Quixote in different roles, if one counts the Welles version (for which Rey supplied offscreen narration in the final scene).

His work with Luis Buñuel during the 1960s and 1970s made him internationally famous; he was the first "international Spanish actor". Particularly, Rey starred in Buñuel's 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.

Another of the successes of Rey-Buñuel's tandem was That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), nominated to another Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and to the Golden Globe in the same category, thou this movie failed to win either. Rey's voice had to be dubbed by Michel Piccoli.

He 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, but Friedkin discovered that Rabal spoke neither French nor English, so he opted to keep Rey.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Rey was awarded at San Sebastián and Cannes, and got the gold medal of the Spanish Art and Movie Sciences Academy. He became the president of that Academy from 1992 till his death two years later.

He died in Madrid of cancer.