Dies at the age of 85, actor José Luis Pellicena

March 1980. The Lara Theatre, with a reputation of scenario bourgeois, raises its curtain, and appears José Luis Pellicena, the complexion is very white, lips crimson, wig reddish and a dress baroque of 40 kilos of weight. Surprise and disbelief in the stalls. Yes, it is the same heartthrob of the Studies 1. The actor plays Elizabeth I of England in Quadrille, a drama of the valencian Francisco Ors, that fable with the idea that the virgin queen was not a woman but a gay man. After the first stupor for characterization, comes one of the highlights: Pellicena faces a naked integral key to show the tortured reality of his character. That could be a huge scandal in that Spain Posfranquista, an actor of his stature naked and transvestite, and, however, Pellicena achieved with this role one of the great triumphs of his career. It was always your favorite of all those who performed it.

"Until Marsillach and José María Rodero, which were not types easy precisely, they came to congratulate me", she recalled in a recent interview with Aisge the actor, who has died today in Madrid, at the age of 85, as a result of a myocardial infarction.

Pellicena took more than a half-decade removed from the scenario (his last role was In the dark heart of the woods, Alonso de Santos, 2010), but remained a respected figure in the world of theatre, where he gained his greatest triumphs. As he said, the cinema was a chance in your life. "I put the films there and it was when he was finishing the function, no more". Even so, he liked to recall his appearance in the movie by Jaime de Armiñán In September. The television also filled him with despite having starred in hits in black-and-white as Crime and punishment or through the fog.

Actor with a reputation of intellectual and plant galán aristocratic, possessed of a few ways that in the eyes of today, can seem affected, but which conquered the audience of the 70's and 80's, its period of greatest fame. Flirty and smile a seductive, was the actor fetish of masters such as Tamayo and Narros and performed much of the repertoire of the Golden age: Calderon de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina... Also by international artists of the calibre of Arthur Miller, Sartre, O'neill or Peter Shafter (he was Salieri in the Spanish premiere of Amadeus).

One of his great successes was Yerma (1971), of Lorca, in which he shared the limelight with an incandescent Nuria Espert. Victor Garcia, an argentine director with the reputation of enfant terrible, addressed to him on this show, with a lot of pagan ritual and sexual, which premiered in Madrid between strong security measures. With this assembly who would travel half way around the world. The criticism of the New York Times praised "the fine blend of the apparent strength and own indolence" of his character. Since then, Espert would be a great friend.

what More summits? The comedy Barbarian (1991), who played in the National Dramatic Centre at the orders of José Carlos Plaza, a colossal assemblage of the work of Valle-Inclán came to the six hours of duration. "We ended up in an ambulance, of course." Also demonstrated their taste for risk as a sibylline Marques de Sade in the provocative Marat/Sade (1994), who signed Narros.

Julia Gutiérrez Caba, who shared the stage with him in a Game of kings, the (1996) remembers him as "an actor very rigorous, I was studying a lot and a person very nice and polite". She was a witness of the kingdom that was to his first wife, argentinian Olga Moliterno, who was a wife, a manager and adviser. "She came to all of the features and assays, will influence a lot on your way to work. I could even rectify what I had said to the director".

The death of Moliterno in 2004 plunged to the actor, a native of Zaragoza, in a deep depression. But still he had duties to interpret, such as The portrait of Dorian Grey, The ladder or Call an inspector, next to the also disappeared Paco Valladares. In 2010, in addition, he married a young cuban lady, 30 years younger, whom he met on the Internet.

for years this amateur chess is not stepped on a stage but did not feel frustrated or sad, "I can't say I've gone hungry, cold, or hardship. On the contrary". He was always grateful for belonging to his profession that he was "allowed to live in a dream".

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