Amparo Rivelles

Amparo Rivelles was born in Madrid on February 11, 1925 into a family of actors, her father Rafael Rivelles , and her mother María Fernanda Ladrón de Guevara , had, what is said, tables, and she always admired his acting talent. . To the point that when in an interview on Radiocinema, in 1943, she was asked about her acting preferences, she assured that both were the best performers of the moment. She amparito-she would only later be Doña Amparo-, she also assured at that time that “I love both theater and cinema”, although on that occasion she opted for the latter. In the wide family of comedians of which she is a part, Amparo is also linked to Carlos Larrañaga -son of her mother’s second husband,Pedro Larrañaga -, Amparo Larrañaga and Luis Merlo . It is clear that Amparo developed her own acting talent around her parents’ theater company -the idea of ​​studying to become a lawyer would soon be forgotten-, and this facilitated her film debut at a very young age, at the age of fifteen she was in Mary Juana (Armando Vidal, 1940). Although she already knows before her the presence of her on the theater stages in 1936 with “Our Natacha”.

Immediately, Cifesa fixed its attention on the incipient actress, and she would become a regular presence in its productions, first with small roles such as Alma de Dios ( Ignacio F. Iquino , 1941), according to the work of Carlos Arniches , but soon it would have characters of more substance in the adaptations of other theatrical comedies such as Los ladrones somos gente honesta (1942) and Eloísa is under an almond tree (1943), by Enrique Jardiel Poncela ; she also in Malvaloca (1942), according to the work of Joaquín Álvarez Quintero, where she, at the age of 17, had to appear to be a 35-year-old woman. She also shines under the command of Juan de Orduña in the funnyDeliciously Fools (1943). A director who knows how to take advantage of all his talent is Rafael Gil , who not only makes Eloísa laugh , but also broadens the arc of the actress, who intrigues with her mysterious woman from El clove (1944), which he adapts to Pedro Ruiz de Alarcón, thrills with the drama La fe (1947), where the text by Armando Palacio Valdés serves to show the vocational doubts of a woman who has made plans to enter a convent, and moves in a plot typical of a crime novel in La calle sin sol (1948), based on a text by Miguel Mihura . In fact, Rivelles assures that Gil, Juan de Orduña andLuis Lucia are the directors with whom he best connected.

Rivelles is an indisputable synonym of acting quality on stage and on the screen, and is present in film adaptations of the most prestigious authors of the time. This is the case of De mujer a mujer (Luis Lucia, 1950), which is based on a text by Jacinto Benavente , or La herida luminosa (1956) , which adapts a work by Josep Maria de Segarra; although there is no shortage of classics such as Fuenteovejuna (1947), the work of Lope de Vega . She will also be considered ideal to embody historical figures, so she stars in Eugenia de Montijo (1944), The Duchess of Benamejí (1947), The Lioness of Castilla(1951) and is Queen Isabel the Catholic in Alba de América (1951). Of these titles, the actress would remember that she did not like to dress from the period, and that despite pretending to be blockbusters, the lack of means was noticeable.

In 1957 they proposed to her to go to Mexico to do theater for six weeks: “My goal was to try my luck, change my environment, feel more independent, see if I could or could not by myself,” she explained in an interview with the newspaper “Abc” in 1974. That will become 18 years on the other side of the pond, where in addition to acting on stage, he makes movies -starting with The Children of Divorce (1958) and reaching La madrastra (1974)- and soap operas – Deadly Sin (1960), The lioness (1961), Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1962), The hyena(1973)…-, which have not remained too indelible in the memory beyond the Mexican borders, but which show that work is never lacking. He also had the opportunity to work for two years in Cuba, before the Castro revolution broke out.

She had a daughter at the age of twenty-six, without being married, whom she named after her grandmother, María Fernanda. When she was asked about her father, she would say: “The father, you say? No. I had it, not the father.” She declared at the time that she preferred love without marriage, than marriage without love, and although she has confessed to having been in love several times, she never said “I do.” Regarding her condition as a single mother, she explained: “I was lucky, of course, because I never received contempt or a bad face from anyone, on the contrary, everyone stopped me on the street. Oh, Amparito, they have told us that you have a beautiful girl, what is her name? The fact is that her offspring became a grandmother very soon, at the age of 49.

Back in Spain he did La Coquito (1977) with Pedro Masó , not much. The most striking of his filmography from then on is Hay que undo la casa ( José Luis García Sánchez , 1986), which gave him a Goya, and Esquilache ( Josefina Molina , 1989). Also notable are her roles in two prestigious literary television series, Los gozos y las sombras (1982), which she adapts to Gonzalo Torrente Ballester , and La Regenta (1995), based on the work of Leopoldo Alas Clarín .

He represented “La duda” in theater in 2006, a version of “El abuelo” by Benito Pérez Galdós , an occasion that he took advantage of to say goodbye to his professional activity, and after receiving the medal of honor from the Circle of Film Writers that same year, he lived a quiet retreat.