Francisco Rabal

Francisco Rabal Valera, actor: born Aguilas, Spain 8 March 1926; married 1951 Asunción Balaguer (one son, one daughter); died Bordeaux, France 29 August 2001.

Francisco Rabal was for decades not only Spain's favourite actor – he was the face of Spanish cinema in the world, working with Luis Buñuel in atmospheric and pioneering works that included Viridiana and Belle de Jour. "It wasn't that Rabal was the best, although that could be so," said an actor friend, "but that he was the best loved. He was like a father to us all."

"Paco" Rabal's origins were as humble as the picaresque ruffians he loved to play. A miner's son from Aguilas in Spain's south-eastern region of Murcia, he sold sweets and sunflower seeds in the street, and later worked in a chocolate factory. He trained as an electrician while at night he read books and started to write plays and poems. In 1936 he started working in the Chamartin Cinematic Studios in Madrid as an electrician. "My legs shook the first time I went in," he recalled. He stayed five years, during which he read the replies for stars of the day as they practised their lines.

In 1942, during the shooting of a scene in La Rueda de la Vida ("The Wheel of Life"), he volunteered as an extra. He was noticed, and began a career that comprised some 200 films. He played what the Spanish call "un galán" – a screen idol, a seducer. In his youth he was strikingly beautiful – unrecognisable to those who know only his elderly, ravaged features. But he was able to deepen his range to become a compelling, irresistible figure, perhaps reaching his peak in his portrayal of the elderly Goya in the recent Goya (Goya in Bordeaux, 1999).

This luminous film, directed by Carlos Saura and shot by Antonio Storaro, celebrates Rabal's squashed pumpkin face and drooping bulk that bore an uncanny likeness to Goya's own self-portraits. Lumbering, irascible but still tender and sensitive, Goya's personality, the actor claimed, was the closest to his own of any role he had played. Rabal had the talent, rare in Spanish theatre, of appearing not to act. He was the first actor in Spanish cinema to play the part of a worker convincingly. His instruments were his unforgettable broken voice and eyes that blazed with energy.

From 1947 he worked in Madrid theatres. After working on stage in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, he alternated film and theatre until in 1953 the director Vicente Escrivá starred him in a number of films about religion and politics. The breakthrough occurred when he played a priest in Nazarín (1958) directed by Luis Buñuel. Rabal's portrayal so impressed Buñuel that the director chose him to appear in Viridiana (1961), then Belle de Jour (1966) with Catherine Deneuve. The two men forged a lifelong friendship and Rabal called him "Uncle Luis".

Rabal's early years taught him that life was a struggle between rich and poor, and he was a committed Communist. It was said, however, that his personal charm disarmed even the most rabid Fascists. "He was not what you would call cultured," a fellow actor said, "But he radiated a sincerity that was more convicing than any Marxist theory."

Merle Oberon reportedly promised him fame if he followed her to Hollywood. But Rabal was not interested. "My English is poor," he confessed, "and I don't like the American life style, full of individualistic ambition."

Rabal's career flagged in the Seventies, although he always had work. Two car crashes, in 1963 and 1980, left him with terrible scars on his face, he became paunchy, began to go bald, and for a while wore a wig. But he starred in a popular television series, Juncal, about an engaging retired bullfighter. He won Best Actor Award at Cannes for his part in Los santos inocentes (The Holy Innocents, 1984). And in 1990 he appeared in Pedro Almodóvar's hit ¡Atame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!). Rabal was renowned for his prodigious memory and was able to reel off the names of a complete film crew. At the farewell dinner of Goya, Rabal recited a poem dedicated to each of the 60 members of the team. "He knew us all and was able to write something for each one," one recalled.

Rabal was due to receive this year's Donostia prize for lifetime work at the San Sebastian film festival. He was flying home from the Montreal Film Festival, where he had received a lifetime achievement award, when he fell ill on the plane. The pilot landed in Bordeaux, and Rabal died in the airport.

If Goya might have been made for him, so too was his role in Lázaro de Tormes (2000), a rollicking version of the world's first picaresque novel. Rabal plays the sadistic blind man, his grotesque mouth distorted with malice, a quavering hand hovering over his young guide, ready to swipe the poor boy to the ground.

He was a heavy smoker and drinker, and he often observed that these pleasures would finish him off. One day during the shoot of Goya, as he portrayed the artist on his deathbed, Rabal remarked: "In my family we have a peasant fatalism towards death. Death seems to us the logical consequence of life. As an aunt once told me: 'We all have to be born and we all have to die' ". But behind the fatalism lay humour and irreverence: a cartoon in the daily El Mundo showed the portly old actor asking Saint Peter: "At weekends, could I descend to hell for a while?"

Elizabeth Nash