Rey, Fernando (1912–1994)

Spanish actor. He appeared in several films by Luis Buñuel, including Viridiana (1961) and Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie/The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). He played villains in many European-made action and adventure films; for example, the sardonic drug-running mastermind of The French Connection (1971).

Rey was born in the northern Spanish port of La Coruña. He fought against the right-wing Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, and began his film career in the 1940s by dubbing foreign actors into Spanish. From 1945 he was a frequent presence in Spanish films. He came to wider attention when he played the eccentric uncle in Viridiana, a film whose anticlerical content provoked considerable controversy. He gave another strong performance for Buñuel as an ageing lecher in Tristana (1970), and also starred in the same director's French-made Cet obscur Objet du désir/That Obscure Object of Desire (1977). In The French Connection and its 1975 sequel, Rey became known to a wider international audience. He twice made forays into Shakespeare on the screen: as the Earl of Worcester in Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight (1966) and as Lepidus in Charlton Heston's Antony and Cleopatra (1970).