Fernando Rey - biography

“I was an extra in many films.  Oh, many films!  The producers always cast me as the same man.  The man in the dinner jacket.  Like David Niven and his famous Central Casting label, I was the Black Tie Type.”

“When Bunuel was casting Viridina, he wanted me.  ‘I saw him as a corpse in a film and he was wonderful.’ So Bunuellian!”

“You see Bunuel’s films, you think of a complicated mentality, maybe twisted with beaucoup complexes about religion and sex.  No!  He was clean.  Like a baby.  So clever, so clean - fresh!  Everything I do reminds me of him because he surprised me.  So did Orson Welles.  They still surprise me.  Even after their deaths and my 150 films.”

“Impossible!  But I loved him.  He was so misused, abused.  Big tragedy!  He had the metabolism of a falcon.  He burnt ideas so quickly.  We’d talk about a sequence over breakfast.  He’d start walking up and down, smoking his cigar, and in a minute he’d be changing it into another idea, and then another - in the end, he was telling a different story and possible film.  That was Orson, a genius!”

Fernando Rey has appeared in the following films:
Les Amants de Tolède (1953)
Don Juan (1956)
Le Chanteur de Mexico (1956)
Una aventura de Gil Blas (1956)
Les Bijoutiers du clair de lune (1958)
La Rivolta degli schiavi (1960)
Viridiana (1961)
Shéhérazade (1963)
The Ceremony (1963)
The Running Man (1963)
Échappement libre (1964)
Campanadas a medianoche (1965)
Misión Lisboa (1965)
Cartes sur table (1966)
Navajo Joe (1966)
Return of the Seven (1966)
Cervantes (1967)
Le Vicomte règle ses comptes (1967)
The Immortal Story (1968)
Villa Rides (1968)
Land Raiders (1969)
The Adventurers (1970)
Tristana (1970)
Vamos a matar, compañeros (1970)
A Town Called Hell (1971)
The Light at the Edge of the World (1971)
The French Connection (1971)
Antony and Cleopatra (1972)
Bianco, rosso e... (1972)
Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972)
La chute d’un corps (1973)
Dites-le avec des fleurs (1974)
Fatti di gente perbene (1974)
La Femme aux bottes rouges (1974)
French Connection II (1975)
A Matter of Time (1976)
Cadaveri eccellenti (1976)
Le Désert des Tartares (1976)
Voyage of the Damned (1976)
El segundo poder (1976)
Cet obscur objet du désir (1977)
The Assignment (1977)
L’Ingorgo – Una storia impossibile (1979)
Quintet (1979)
Caboblanco (1980)
La Dame aux camélias (1980)
Casta e pura (1981)
Un amour interdit (1984)
El Caballero del dragón (1985)
Padre nuestro (1985)
Rustlers’ Rhapsody (1985)
Hôtel du paradis (1986)
Moon Over Parador (1988)
La bahía esmeralda (1989)
La Batalla de los Tres Reyes (1990)
Diceria dell’untore (1990)
1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)
Don Quijote de Orson Welles (1992)
L’Atlantide (1992)