Alfonso Arau Biography

With a long and fruitful career spanning more than 60 years, Alfonso Arau has become one of the more noticeable filmmakers of the Latino community in Hollywood. Whether as an actor, producer or director, he has shown an innate ability to be an extraordinary entertainer and storyteller.

Arau was born on January 11^th, 1932 in Mexico City, Mexico. His father was a dentist, which allowed him to have a privileged upbringing. However, Alfonso attended the city’s public schools due to his father’s desire for him to have compassion for his countrymen (Grimm).  He became attracted to the performing arts at a young age, excelling at ballet and tap dancing, singing, and comedic acting. Upon enrolling at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Arau initially planned to study medicine, until a meeting with a ballerina helped him to fall in love again with dance (Dent).

After attempting to be a professional dancer, Arau noticed his skills as a comedic actor were in demand in Mexico’s film industry. In 1954, he secured his first role in the Mexican comedy “El Casto Susano”. That role led to other comedic roles in 1957 and 1960. He migrated to Cuba in 1958 to host his own variety show. Later, he made his way to East Germany to star in “…und Deine Liebe auch”, which premiered in 1962. He returned home in 1964 to star along side legendary Mexican filmmaker, Luis Buñuel, in “There Are No Thieves in This Village” (Grimm).

After studying in Europe, Arau returned to North America and attended the prestigious film school at UCLA. By the late 1960’s, and early 1970’s, he took on roles with directors who would become well known: Sam Peckinpah and Alejandro Jodorowsky. In these films, The Wild Bunch and El Topo, he played stereotypical bandito Mexican characters, which were described as “wild, dirty, and savage-like” (Dent). He eventually gained more recognition with his films in the 70’s, including Calzonzín Inspector, which won two Ariel Awards. The Ariel Awards were the equivalent of the Academy Award in the United States (Dent). While teaching a screenwriting class, he began a relationship with another instructor and aspiring writer, Laura Esquivel. They married in 1975 and worked on several films together until they divorced in 1993 (Grimm).

The 1980’s brought Arau some of his more memorable supporting roles in American films. In 1980, he starred alongside Kurt Russell in Robert Zemeckis’ comedy Used Cars, where he played a very dedicated tow truck driver. 1984 and 1986 saw him slip back into his stereotypical bandito roles with supporting nods in Romancing The Stone and The Three Amigos. Additional roles in the late 80’s led up to what many considered to be his best and most well known film, except this would take him behind the camera again as the director of Like Water For Chocolate (Grimm).

Adapted from his wife’s successful book of the same title, Arau produced and directed Like Water For Chocolate. It was made with a small budget of $2 million dollars, but was able to gross $22 million in revenues in the US alone (Grimm). Although it failed to gather any Academy Award nominations, it did sweep the Ariel Awards by winning all 11 categories the film was nominated in. Despite the overwhelming success of the film, the creative process put a strain on the relationship between Arau and Esquivel, which led to their divorce and a lawsuit in which Esquivel was seeking $19 million of the film’s profits (Grimm).

Arau directed seven more films after Like Water For Chocolate with varying degrees of success. A Walk In The Clouds, starring Keanu Reeves, was a “darkhorse chick-flick hit” (Grimm) and brought in $50 million in the US. He also was involved in making a couple of movies for television. Most notable of these was The Magnificent Ambersons, in 2002, which was the film Orson Welles made, in 1942, but never saw his original, uncut version, released (IMDB). Although his career has slowed down, Alfonso Arau continues to be an influential figure in Hollywood for the Latin Community.

                                                              Works Cited:

1. Dent, David W. "Encyclopedia." Encyclopedia of Modern Mexico. 376th ed. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2002. 6. Print.

2. Grimm, Matthew. "Alfonso Arau Biography." Http://www.tcm.com. TCM, 2014. Web. 18 May 2014. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/5077%7C10351/Alfonso-Arau/biography.html

3. "Alfonso Arau." IMDb. IMDb.com. Web. 20 May 2014          <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000778/>.