Los Angeles: Iconic Mexican actress Silvia Pinal has passed away. She was 93.
Mexico’s culture secretary, Claudia Curiel de Icaza, as well as the National Association of Performers announced Pinal’s passing on social media, as per The Hollywood Reporter.
During a prolific acting and producing career that spanned seven decades, Pinal gained international fame for toplining three 1960s classics written and directed by Luis Bunuel: the Palme d’Or co-winner Viridiana (1961), The Exterminating Angel (1962) and Simon of the Desert (1965).
Pinal got her start in the theatre in the late 1940s working with Cuban-born director Rafael Banquells, who would become the first of her four husbands. She tasted success in the cinematic world for the first time in 1950 when, at 18, she landed back-to-back leading roles opposite two of Mexico’s biggest film stars, first with German Valdes (aka Tin-Tan) in the comedy The King of the Neighbourhood and with Mario Moreno (aka Cantinflas) in The Doorman.
She also worked alongside famed actor-singer Pedro Infante in Un Rincon Cerca del Cielo (1952).
Of Pinal’s 100-plus acting credits, she worked mostly in Mexico, though she did appear in several pictures featuring Hollywood talent, including the MGM co-production Guns for San Sebastian (1968), an action film starring Anthony Quinn and Charles Bronson and Samuel Fuller’s Shark (1969), featuring Burt Reynolds, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
On television, Pinal won over audiences as the presenter and producer of Mujer, Casos de la Vida Real, a 1986-2007 anthology melodrama based on real-life stories submitted by viewers. The hit program, which aired throughout Latin America, tackled social themes that received scant attention in Mexico in the ’80s and ’90s, including domestic violence, LGBT discrimination and women’s rights.
