Hector Bonilla, the Mexican actor who never wanted to leave the stage

Mexico, 25 no (EFE). – Mexican actor Hector Bonilla, who died Friday of cancer, lived an exuberant life around his greatest passion, theater and the other disciplines he discovered throughout his life.

Born in 1939 in Mexico City, Bonilla had time to develop his acting skills in soap operas, TV series or films, but he also worked as a director, producer and even a musician.

He studied at the National Theater School of Mexico’s National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA), where he developed an acting talent that would lead him to participate in more than 30 films and many series.

At the age of 80, and despite suffering from kidney cancer since the beginning of 2019, he continued to practice his profession until his last days and received the Ariel de Oro Award this year from the Mexican Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMACC).

This award, the highest awarded by the Mexican film industry, was the final touch to a stellar career that Bonilla catapulted internationally with “Rojo amanecer” (1990), a film that recounts the student movement and the Tlatelolco massacre, in Mexico City, on October 2, 1968.

Another work that brought him great recognition was the play Long Live the Dead! , in which the Mexican government implemented a program that provided free tickets to illiterate and lower-class children.

“If we’re strict, the only real school of acting that exists is theatre. If you have two months of practice and then the time the performance goes on, each time you’ll perform better. But in cinema… 15 takes ain’t nothing,” he explained. Bonilla in honor from the Ministry of Culture and the National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA) on August 14, 2019.

Awards are not promoted

During the event, the artist confirmed to EFE that the awards that gave him the most satisfaction were the “Unrecorded”.

“It was a great relief that the authors of the works told me that in this role I was the one who did the best,” explained the late actor, with a prolific career.

With his full name Hector Hermelo Bonilla Rebenton, the actor was married to Mexican actress Socorro Bonilla between 1976 and 1983, and later, in 1985, he married Sofia Alvarez, also an actress, voice actress and narrator, with whom he lived until the end of his days.

During the ceremony honoring Bonilla’s 57-year career, which was full of emotions and memories, his wife had many words of thanks and appreciation for who was her life partner: a hardworking and consistent man.

During the ceremony, he said, “Hector is an actor who works wherever it is required, however humble. (…) He is a steady and generous man: he is what he is and what he is.”

The actor himself posited that this and other honors he received during that year were a turning point, but he also made it clear that he still had a lot of energy and desire to move forward with his life and career.

“I love life so badly, I’m so lucky to have found my wife, and I’ve lived with her for 38 years and she has three children and seven grandchildren whom I love so dearly,” he explained during another tribute at Cineteca Nacional in June 2019.

he said at an INBA event, in an apparent analogy of his life to his work and this eventually became his epitaph. EFE

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