Actor Héctor Alterio, the man in suspense who never left the stage, dies at 96

Actor Héctor Alterio died this Saturday at the age of 96, as his family reported in a press release.

“Dear friends and colleagues, it is with deep sorrow that we wish to inform you that today, December 13 in the morning, Héctor Alterio left us. He left in peace after a long and full life dedicated to his family and to art, being active professionally until this day. May he rest in peace,” the note said.

Jesús Cimarro, producer of his latest show, a little storydeclares: “He is leaving, one of our great performers on the Spanish and Argentinian scene is leaving us. I had the honor of being his producer in numerous productions. Have a good trip, dear Héctor”, declares the owner of Pentación Espectáculos in a press release.

Since his debut in 1948 with the work Suicide prohibited in springby Alejandro Casona, nothing could make Héctor Alterio leave the stage. “Theatre still produces in me an insatiable curiosity, and as long as it remains alive, I continue to move forward”he once confessed to El Cultural.

Her love for theater was such that her two only children, Ernesto and Malena (Goya for Best Leading Actress for don’t let anyone sleep), fruit of his marriage to Ángela Bacaicoa, they ended up following in his footsteps.

At 96 years old, he was still a board enthusiast capable of traveling the coasts of our country with circuits of Like 3000 years agoin homage to the Spanish poet León Felipe, or a little storyan autobiographical piece where he relives his exile.

If anything,As a good Argentinian, only football sometimes came between him and his vocation. Would you change a good game for a bad storyline? Javier López Rejas, a journalist from this house, asked him one day. “Yes,” he replied, “and if Real Madrid play this game, even better.”

Possessing a great sense of humor and a particular sensitivity, Héctor Benjamín Alterio Onorato – his full name – was born in Buenos Aires on September 21, 1929. Son of a lower-middle-class Neapolitan immigrant familyAfter the premature death of his father, he had to start working to help around the house.

Having a vocation for the theater very early, after completing his drama studies, he founded the company Nuevo Teatro – which remained active until 1968. However, it was in the early 1970s that his name began to become popular thanks to his cinematographic interventions.

Until then, He had previously worked with some of Argentina’s leading directors as Fernando Ayala (in Argentinian until death), Héctor Olivera (in The revenge of Beto Sánchez And Rebel Patagonia) or Leopoldo Torre Nilsson (in The Saint of the Sword, The mafia And The seven fools).

A forced exile

“What I can’t forget is when we arrived in Spain, in the year 74, when my son (Ernesto) was 4 years old,” Alterio remembers about his arrival in our country. “We were in a shelter on Calle Bravo Murillo and I was holding his hand in the street, and then he looked at me and said, ‘Dad, what language do these people speak?’ I don’t understand them.

That year, Alterio presented The truceby Sergio Renán, at the San Sebastián Film Festival – the first film in Argentine history to be nominated for an Oscar. Threatened by the Triple A – Apostolic Anticommunist Alliance, an Argentinian far-right terrorist organization –, He decides not to return to his country and to settle in Madrid. with his wife and two children.

In our country, Alterio debuted with Carlos Saura in the film Raising crows. He said that during his first take, he was so nervous that even though he had to play dead, he couldn’t stop his eyelids from twitching, disrupting the shoot several times.

Fortunately, that didn’t stop him from continuing to work and then they arrived To an unknown god by Jaime Chávarri – for which he won the best actor prize at the San Sebastian Festival –, The Cuenca crimeby Pilar Miró; Subject pendingby José Luis Garci; either Don Juan in hell And The detective and deathby Gonzalo Suárez.

In 1980 he played alongside Ana Torrent The nestby Jaime de Armiñán, second film in which the performer participated and which received an Oscar nomination as best foreign film.

Visionary in the choice of his projects, this feat will also be repeated with Camille (1984), The official history (1985) – which ultimately won the statuette – and, another of his unforgettable titles, The bride’s sonalongside Ricardo Darín and Norma Aleandro.

Throughout his life, Alterio, who In 2004, he received the Honorary Goya, he participated in more than 150 films, Among which, in addition to those mentioned, his great performances in titles such as Wild horses, Ashes of paradise, Burnt money, Kamchatka, Erased footprints, November, white smoke And the last train.

But He never hid his weakness for the theater. “What is happening is this: there is an unknown man, whom I have never seen in my life and whom I will never see. This man leaves his house, arrives at a ticket office, buys a ticket, pays the money with which I live, sits in an armchair, passively, and waits to be mobilized. This whole journey of this man who is the public, keeps me in suspense,” he told El Cultural.

“Life went by so quickly…”

“It makes me think,” he continued passionately, “that this man must be seeing a first, and I must forget the two or three hundred times I have said the same thing. This constant play, this tension, this vigilance, this attention, is a constant challenge that only theater provokes in me.which only exists in one context.

Far from the small and big screen since 2021, in 2025 a brief but intense appearance in the series Your Majestywith Anna Castillo and his own son Ernesto, brought him back to television.

In 2023 he said goodbye to the Argentinian stages with In Buenos Aires and in his later years he continued to tour in his host countrywith one of his most personal projects, Like 3000 years agoin which, together with guitarist José Luis Merlin, he returns to the stage to bring to life the poems of León Felipe.

Of the great Spanish poet, another famous exile, he was seduced, he says, by “his aura, the rebellion which led him to exile, the originality with which he approaches his verses and his particular language. He is very caustic on the one hand, and very sincere on the other, his poetry is strewn with all its contradictions”. It is possible that, without knowing it, he was talking about himself.

Charismatic like few others, his presence has never gone unnoticed. “Life has gone by so quickly… – he said in 2019 to El Cultural – Ernesto will be 50 years old today and he is a wonderful actor, a son that my wife and I idolize, with Malena, because they give us permanent satisfaction. But this image of Ernesto looking at me from below never disappears and I think, how quickly it happened. This with so many other things. Life is a blink of an eye…” And in the blink of an eye, no one like him has made so many things happen.