A great actor has died, who did everything and who displayed his talent on the radio (at COPE and Antena 3, for more than five years), theater, television and cinema: Gabriel Latorre Gracia (Zaragoza, 1953 ). He started on the airwaves, where he triumphed with his beautiful voice, and one of the first who caught his personality when he went to interview him was Xavier Cugat, who made him a caricature and said: “You have a very peculiar face. May I make a cartoon for you? “. The anecdote was a prediction: with that face as versatile as a painter, Gabriel Latorre has been almost every man in fiction. It was a luxury secondary, as inspired and professional as it was essential.
Cinephile Luis Alegre portrays it like this: “Gabriel Latorre is one of the actors with the greatest passion, but at the same time with the least ambition, that I have ever met. The fact that Fernando Trueba offered him a role in 1986 in ‘El año de las Luces’ determined his decision to go live in Madrid. I had met him when ‘Be unfaithful and don’t look with whom’ came to Zaragoza for the premiere in December 1985. A few months later he called me asking about him. He stayed with his look and his voice. He had a very beautiful and very personal voice; he had worked on the radio ”. In fact, his father used to tell him: “You have the voice of a canon.”
Jesús Marco, president of the Aragonese Film Academy, says: “He had enormous acting talent, a great voice, but above all he was a sensitive being and with a huge heart for his friends. Even if he felt bad, he never lost his peculiar sense of humor. ” And remember also that in 2018 he received the Simon of Honor from the ACA. The actress Luisa Gavasa, who coincided with him in various projects, with a shaking voice, points out: “He was a wonderful actor, a beautiful person and a good son who loved his family above all else.” She adds, her voice shrouded in tears: “I forgot to say that he was a great friend. A very faithful person with his colleagues and with the directors he has worked with, a loyal and humble man. It is a pity”.
Gabriel Latorre felt a great attraction to the theater since he was a child, through the broadcasts of ‘Estudio 1’ and ‘Novela’ on TVE. “That seemed fascinating to me. One day, in HERALDO, Pilar Delgado published an advertisement saying that young actors were being sought to set up a school or a small, private company. She inoculated me with the poison for this profession. Then he created La Taguara”, He recalled, and was in the company for many years. Later, he would collaborate with the Teatro de la Ribera, Teatro del Temple and the Centro Dramático de Aragón, among other companies, and in 2015 he was awarded at the 2015 Ares gala.
Gabriel Latorre: “I think I am a chameleon actor that I transform easily. When I have to play a role, I study it, think about it and look at myself in the mirror and it comes out “
In a long conversation about his career, he told HERALDO: “I think I am a chameleon actor who transforms easily. When I have to play a role, I study it, think about it and look at myself in the mirror and it comes out. Things don’t always work out for you: I remember that in Julio Sánchez Valdés’s ‘The Fountain of Age’ I had to play the town’s fool. I could not find the point of the character. I went round and round and did not see me. I thought of ‘Ryan’s Daughter’, a beautiful David Lean movie, and I remembered the role John Mills played ”.
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Gabriel was a protean actor, charismatic, with empathy. He felt comfortable wherever they called him. His motto, or actor’s poetics, was very clear: naturalness. He felt happy in all the media, even reciting poetry, something he liked to do and that he had done in his early days with La Taguara: “In the cinema, as Fernán Gómez says, ‘they pay you to wait’. But, it is so comforting! They tell you a story, you will die, the film will continue there and you will be in it, they will put it in festivals, in film libraries, in specific cycles. Cinema is like a door to immortality. TV allows you to survive, and thank goodness it exists. And the theater is the source where the actor has to go to drink, to take a breath, to learn the value of silence and gesture. It is harder and has a special magic. In all media I defend naturalness ”.
Itziar Miranda, moved, says from Madrid: “I coincided with him in ‘Amar in troubled times’. He was a simple man and enjoyed his work. I think knowing that I was Aragonese made him feel at home. He liked that very much: sharing roots “. Gabriel himself corroborated this: “In Madrid everyone knows that I am from Zaragoza, that it is my home, my land, my passion, the place where I like to walk. I love participating with companies and directors from here ”.
“In Madrid everyone knows that I am from Zaragoza, that it is my home, my land, my passion, the place where I like to walk. I love participating with companies and directors from here “
His curriculum is extensive: on television he worked as José María Forqué in ‘Ramón y Cajal’ and ‘La sangre y la ceniza’; in ‘Lorca, the death of a poet’ by José Antonio Bardem, in several episodes of ‘The woman of your life’, in ‘The girls of today’, in ‘The forge of a rebel’ by Mario Camus, ‘ Between orange trees’ by Josefina Molina, ‘The footprint of crime’, ‘Love in troubled times’,’ Tell me ‘,’ Central Hospital ‘, and so many. And he was in many films from Betriu’s’ Requiem for a Spanish Peasant ‘,’ The Baron of Munchausen ‘by Terry Gilliam,’ The Air of a Crime ‘by Antonio Isasi, to’ Soldados de Salamina ‘by David Trueba,’ Justi @ Cia ‘and’ Miau ‘by Ignacio Estaregui or’ Buñuel in the labyrinth of olives’ by Salvador Simó. He worked with the great directors: Trueba, Bardem, Forqué, Saura, Berlanga, Colomo, Aranda, Cuerda, Almodóvar, Fernando and David Trueba. With Paula Ortiz he appeared in ‘From your window to mine’. And one of his last works on the stage was in ‘Buñuel, Lorca, Dalí’ (2000), at the Temple Theater, where fate seemed to agree with his father: he even played Pius XII.
Gabriel Latorre: “The cinema is like a door to immortality. TV allows you to survive, and thank goodness it exists. And the theater is the source where the actor has to go to drink, to take a breath, to learn the value of silence and gesture. It is harder and has a special magic “
Also, he was a great photographer: “I take advantage of the shootings. What I like is doing creative photography: seeing landscapes, creating worlds with my classmates or with whatever comes my way. I have many of my photos posted on the portal www.multimagen.com ”. Rest in peace this actor who was everywhere, in advertising, in Aragonese cinema and in a pioneering film like ‘Abengalí’ by Félix Zapatero, in which he was the protagonist.
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