22 Facts About Fernando Rey

Fernando Casado Arambillet, best known as Fernando Rey, was a Spanish film, theatre, and television actor, who worked in both Europe and the United States.

The debonair Rey was described by French Connection producer Philip D'Antoni as "the last of the Continental guys".

Fernando Rey achieved his greatest fame after he turned 50: "Perhaps it is a pity that my success came so late in life", he told the Los Angeles Times.

Fernando Rey studied architecture, but the Spanish Civil War interrupted his university studies which led him to his success.

In 1936, Fernando Rey began his career in films as an extra, sometimes even getting credited.

Fernando Rey kept his first name, but took his mother's second surname, Rey, a short surname with a clear meaning.

Fernando Rey's voice was considered intense and personal, and he became the narrator of important Spanish movies including Luis Garcia Berlanga's Bienvenido Mr Marshall, Ladislao Vajda's Marcelino Pan y Vino, and even the 1992 re-dubbed version of Orson Welles' Don Quixote.

Fernando Rey acted in four different film versions of Don Quixote in different roles, if one counts the Welles version.

Nevertheless, eventually Fernando Rey became Bunuel's preferred actor and closest friend.

In 1959, Fernando Rey co-starred with Steve Reeves and Christine Kaufmann in the Italian sword and sandal film The Last Days of Pompeii.

In 1961 Fernando Rey played in a European Western, The Savage Guns, and as the popularity of that genre increased during that decade appeared in some other movies, including the political The Price of Power, the cult classic Companeros, and two sequels of The Magnificent Seven, namely Return of the Seven and Guns of the Magnificent Seven.

For Welles, Fernando Rey performed in two completed films, Chimes at Midnight and The Immortal Story.

Fernando Rey played memorably the French villain Alain Charnier in William Friedkin's The French Connection.

Fernando Rey was hired after he flew to New York to be met by a surprised Friedkin.

Along 1970s and 1980s Fernando Rey played in many international co-productions, some of his appearances being cameos.

In later years, Fernando Rey preferred to work in Spain, with successes as Francisco Regueiro's Padre Nuestro, Jose Luis Cuerda's El bosque animado and Jaime de Arminan's Al otro lado del tunel as well as his portrayal of Don Quixote, alongside Alfredo Landa as Sancho Panza, in the memorable Manuel Gutierrez Aragon's El Quijote de Miguel de Cervantes for Television Espanola.

In 1971 Fernando Rey won the best actor award in the San Sebastian International Film Festival, for his performance in Rafael Gil's La duda, based, like Viridiana and Tristana, on a novel by Benito Perez Galdos.

In Lina Wertmuller's Academy Award-nominated film, Seven Beauties, Fernando Rey played the role of Pedro the anarchist who, as a friend of the protagonist and fellow prisoner Pasqualino Settebellezze, chooses a gruesome suicide, rather than spend another day in a Nazi concentration camp.

Fernando Rey won Best Actor award at 1977 Cannes Film Festival for his performance in Elisa, vida mia.

Fernando Rey was awarded the gold medal of the Spanish Movie Arts and Sciences Academy.

Fernando Rey died of bladder cancer in Madrid on 9 March 1994.

Fernando Rey was survived by his wife, who died in 2001.