Tônia Carrero(1922-2018)
- Actress
Maria Antonietta Farias Portocarrero was born in Rio de Janeiro on
August 23, 1922. Her father, Hermenegildo Portocarrero (1894-1959), was
a military man and maths teacher with a lifelong interest in show
business. A close friend of the great Brazilian actor
Procópio Ferreira, he was acquainted
with actors, singers and musicians, and for a time was the director of
Radio Nacional, the chief radio station in Rio, then capital of Brazil.
Tônia had two older brothers, both military men and teachers. At a very
early age, she took an interest in dancing and in sports, eventually
graduating as a physical education teacher.
In 1940 she married the artist Carlos Thiré, who was already creating the comic books for which he is now recognized as a major name of the early years of comics in Brazil. The young couple's only child, the actor, director and drama teacher Cecil Thiré was born on May 28, 1943. In early 1947, she was invited to appear as one of the schoolgirls in Querida Susana (1947) (aka "Querida Suzana") (literally, "Darling Suzana"), directed by Alberto Pieralisi and starring Anselmo Duarte, who was soon to become the biggest leading man in Brazilian films. In her film debut, she had nothing to do but smile. At her insistence, however, she was given one line. When the film was completed, they asked her how she should be credited. She had no idea. Maria Antonietta Portocarrero surely didn't sound like an actress' name. She was having singing lessons at the time and told her teacher about it. The woman thought for a moment and said, "From 'Antonietta' we take 'Tônia.' By breaking the surname in two and keeping the second half, we get 'Carrero.' Your name is going to be Tônia Carrero." And so it was. For her family and closest friends, however, she has always been Mariinha, the nickname given to her when she was born.
Shortly after the making of "Querida Suzana", Thiré got a scholarship and went to Paris to study art with the famous French painter André Lothe (1885-1962). Tônia accompanied him and, once there, enrolled in an acting course named "Education par les Jeux Dramatiques", directed by the famous actor-director Jean-Louis Barrault. As she likes to recall, half of her classmates were horrified to have among them someone so cheerful and healthy in direct contrast to the somber atmosphere of those post-war years. The other half loved her precisely for that.
In December of 1947, the Thirés came back to Brazil and Tônia started looking for work. In 1948 she was invited by 'Fernando de Barros' to play the sister of his wife Maria Della Costa in his first film as a director, Caminhos do Sul (1949) (lit. "Paths of the South"). When the film was released, in late 1949, the two actresses were praised for their beauty, presence, and adroit acting. Fernando then cast Tônia as the lead in Quando a Noite Acaba (1950) (lit. "When the Night Is Over"), made in 1949, right after "Caminhos do Sul." The story was set in Rio and the film was released in that city first. To the director's great annoyance, when it was later shown in São Paulo the title was changed to "Perdida pela Paixão" (lit. "Lost by Passion"), which, besides being misleading, has often caused the two titles to appear in the filmographies of cast and crew as two different films.
Whatever the title, the film did well and Tônia's performance was hailed as a great accomplishment for its lack of pretense and its amazing blend of intensity and restraint, audiences being very impressed by her awesome death scene at the end. She got the admiration of critics and audiences alike for being a stunningly beautiful woman who didn't rest on that, one critic (Décio Vieira Ottoni) going as far as calling her performance "the best by any actress ever seen in Brazilian films so far."
December 13, 1949 became a historical date for the Brazilian theater. On that day, at Rio's Teatro Copacabana, Tônia Carrero and a young lawyer named Paulo Autran made their joint stage debut in "Um Deus Dormiu Lá em Casa", a comedy by the Brazilian author Guilherme Figueiredo, based on the Greek myth of Amphitryon. In the years to come, Tônia and Paulo would turn into household names for their work, together and separately, in films, on the stage, and on TV. 1949 marked the beginning of a legendary partnership that lasted until 2004 when they were seen acting together for the last time in the TV mini-series One Heart (2004) (lit. "One Heart"), as an elderly couple dining at the restaurant where the young actors and directors who were starting a new phase of the Brazilian theater in São Paulo gathered every night, in the late 1940s, the inside joke being that two of the young actors they saw at a nearby table and talked about were ... Tônia Carrero and Paulo Autran!
The creation of the Vera Cruz film company in late 1949 attracted a great number of actors and Tônia was no exception. In 1952 she was seen in the studio's most lavish production, Tico-Tico no Fubá (1952), about the life of that song's composer, Zequinha de Abreu, played by Anselmo Duarte. Tônia was Branca, the circus ballerina the composer falls in love with. The film represented Brazil in the Cannes Film Festival and, like the composer whose life it portrayed, audiences all over fell in love with the beautiful woman who rode a horse with so much skill and enchanted the whole town where the circus stayed for a while, until finding out that she too had fallen in love with the composer. The director was Adolfo Celi, an Italian actor who had come to Brazil in 1948 and in time became one of the country's most influential directors and drama teachers. During the making of the film, in 1951, they fell in love and decided to stay together. That was the end of Tônia's marriage to Carlos Thiré and Adolfo Celi's relationship with the first lady of the Brazilian theater, the celebrated actress Cacilda Becker.
Soon after the enormous success of "Tico Tico no Fubá," Tônia was seen in Fernando de Barros' Appassionata (1952), a somewhat turgid melodrama in which she played a pianist who is loved by Anselmo Duarte. The film did well in spite of mixed reviews and among all her films remains the one in which, beautifully photographed by British cinematographer Ray Sturgess, she looks more stunning. Her last film for Vera Cruz was É Proibido Beijar (1954) (lit. "Kissing Forbidden"). A light comedy directed by Ugo Lombardi, in which for the third time in a row she acted with Zbigniew Ziembinski, the father-figure of the modern Brazilian theater, the film looks dated today, its biggest asset being once again Tônia's striking beauty.
As it was being made, in 1953, pre-production began for the studio's most ambitious project, a film version of "Ana Terra", one of the segments of Érico Veríssimo's monumental epic novel "O Tempo e o Vento" ("Time and the Wind"). Tônia was to star and Celi to direct. Alas, the film was not to be. Vera Cruz collapsed, its contract players, directors, and technicians disbanded, and all that remains today are the beautiful photographic studies suggesting that Ana Terra could have been Tônia's most emblematic film role. In retrospect, Tônia's greatest moment at Vera Cruz remains the scene in "Tico Tico no Fubá" in which, as the circus caravan moves away from the small town where she had met the composer, she and Ziembinski are seen at the coachman's seat of the leading wagon, talking about how life makes you leave things behind, and how hard it can be to make choices.
With the end of hers and Celi's Vera Cruz tenure, they decided to settle in Rio, where, along with Paulo Autran, they founded the famous Tônia-Celi-Autran theater company. From 1956 to 1961, Celi directed, Tônia and Paulo starred, and some of the best actors of the day joined the cast in carefully selected plays by Shakespeare, Goldoni, Lillian Hellman, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pirandello, George Axelrod, Françoise Sagan, and Brazilian authors such as Osman Lins. The company's success was immense, to the point of extending a tour of the southern states of Brazil to Buenos Aires, where Argentinian audiences didn't seem to mind seeing "Othello" in Portuguese.
However, the theatergoers' gain was the moviegoers' loss. Her Vera Cruz days behind her, Tônia turned down an offer to make films in Italy (she dreaded the idea of being away from her son) and became essentially a stage actress. In 1955 she was seen on the screen once more, opposite Arturo de Córdova in Mãos Sangrentas (1955) (released in the US as "The Violent and the Damned"), a prison melodrama made the year before at another studio by the Argentinian director Carlos Hugo Christensen, and then went on a film hiatus of six years, during which she kept a hectic schedule of theater and TV work.
In 1960, during the company's exceptionally successful Buenos Aires season, she was invited by the illustrious director and actor Lautaro Murúa to play his wife in his own film Alias Gardelito (1961). She completed her scenes in four days at neck breaking speed so as to be able to come back to Rio where she was being expected to fulfill a theater engagement. She couldn't possibly know then that, following its release in 1961, the film she had no idea she would be making when she arrived to Buenos Aires would become a classic of the Argentinian cinema, the big irony being that, since it was never released in Brazil and this was before the VHS/DVD era, she has never seen it.
For a while it looked as if the early 1960s would be the beginning of a new phase of her work as a film actress. Early in 1961, almost back to back, she made two films, both released in 1962. First, Carnival of Crime (1962), a Brazilian-American-Argentinian co-production directed by George Cahan and starring the internationally famous French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont (released in the US in 1964 as "Carnival of Crime", the film is available on DVD). Then, Esse Rio Que Eu Amo (1962) (lit. "My Beloved Rio"), an episode film directed by Carlos Hugo Christensen, in which she played an unfaithful woman in the modern version of a story by Brazil's greatest writer, Machado de Assis.
In 1962, when "Esse Rio que Eu Amo" was released, her delicate performance and great beauty at 38 so much impressed the European producers of Copacabana Palace (1962), about to start shooting in Rio, that they offered her the juicy part of the elegant wife of a jewel thief who acted in the famous hotel of the title. Released the same year it was made, this Italian-French co-production directed by Steno (also known as Stefano Vanzina), and starring the popular Italian actor Walter Chiari, became something of a cult movie of its kind. In 1979, when Adolfo Celi came to Rio to direct her in the theater for the first time after the break-up of their marriage in 1962, he jokingly told Tônia that he had never really stopped seeing her, for every other time he turned on the TV in his Rome home, there she was in "Copacabana Palace."
In 1963 Celi had gone back to Italy, where he became an amazingly active actor in international films, his best remembered role being Emilio Largo, the villain who defies James Bond in Thunderball (1965). In 1964 Tônia married the engineer César Thedim (1930-2000), who was to have a brief career as a film producer. They separated in 1977, and she didn't marry again. Like Paulo Autran, after the end of Tônia-Celi-Autran, she founded a new theater company and went on producing and acting in plays by world-wide famous authors like Ibsen (her Nora in "A Doll's House", in which she was directed by her son, Cecil Thiré, and for which she won an award, stands as one of her stage performances people remember more fondly), Feydeau, Somerset Maugham, and Tennessee Williams, as well as Brazilian authors such as Domingos de Oliveira.
In 1967, during the military regime ("the years of lead") when censorship made life hell for those whose work had to do with theater, cinema, music, and literature, she read a play named "Navalha na Carne" (lit. "Razor in the Flesh"), by a brilliant young Brazilian author named Plínio Marcos, and decided to do it. It told the story of an aging prostitute living with her pimp in the shabby pension of a poor and dangerous neighborhood where she walked the streets every night. She can hardly get clients anymore, the pimp gets mad at her, they go through a ghastly night during which he beats her, takes all her money, humiliates her, and leaves her to her fate. Alone, she cries like hell, than pulls herself together, sits down and very calmly eats a sandwich as the curtain comes down. The play was banned by the censors and couldn't be performed anywhere in Brazil. But Tônia fought for it so ferociously and with so much intelligence that the authorities ended up thinking it wiser not to go against a woman the whole country adored, and she was granted permission to do it.
At the peak of her beauty and charm, Tônia gained weight, stopped having her hair done, developed a heavy walk and a clumsy way to move around, learned how to speak with a most ungracious croaky voice, and, under the clever direction of Fauzi Arap, came up with a performance that has become part of the history of the Brazilian theater, for which she became the first actress to win the prestigious Molière Award by unanimous vote. People went to the theater and for a moment their minds boggled. It took them a while to realize that the woman on the stage really was Tônia Carrero. Needless to say, there was a standing ovation every night.
However, when two years later the play was filmed by Braz Chediak and she was invited to repeat on screen her most famous stage role, she turned it down. As she explained, she had done the play for more than a year, all over Brazil, and it was a marvelous experience. But now she was through with it and had even done another play (Frank D. Gilroy's "The Subject Was Roses", in which she played her own son's mother). Along with the suicidal woman in Terence Rattigan's "The Deep Blue Sea", the prostitute in Plínio Marcos' play had been one of the two most straining roles she had ever played. While acting in both she felt she was using up her emotional energy. Playing the prostitute had been immensely rewarding, but she didn't want to go through it again. She suggested Glauce Rocha, one of Brazil's most gifted actresses, whom she admired and was personally very fond of. Her suggestion was accepted and "Navalha na Carne" became one of the last film credits in Glauce Rocha's sadly short career.
In late 1968 Tônia gave a fine performance as the lead in Hugo Kusnet's Tempo de Violência (1969) (lit. "Time of Violence"), a vigorous film about the risk in politically deranged times of thinking that if you mind your own business you will stay out of trouble. The film got good reviews and did well with the public. The same year it was released, Tônia appeared as an elegant 19th century French courtesan in Sangue do Meu Sangue (1969) (lit. "My Own Blood"), a TV series, or rather a "novela" (the Portuguese word to define a genre that flourished in Brazil in the 1960s and doesn't quite have an equivalent in English speaking countries, the best way to describe it being, "Imagine a mini-series, with daily episodes like all mini-series, but lasting from six to eight months").
It was the beginning of the great phase of her career as a TV actress. In 1970 she did something very few actresses in the world (if any at all) must have done. At the same time as she appeared every night on the stage as Lady MacBeth with Paulo Autran in the title role, she played the lead in Pigmalião 70 (1970), her first "novela" for TV Globo, Brazil's biggest TV studio. Such was her success in it, that all over Brazil, hairdressers had a hard time trying to make room for all the women who wanted to get a "Dona Cristina cut" (her character's name). After a number of Globo "novelas" she became tired of the hoopla and asked to be released from her contract. She decided to concentrate on her work in the theater, which was always phenomenally successful, and eventually make a film, like Mário Carneiro's Gordos e Magros (1976) (lit. "The Fat Ones and the Thin Ones"), made in early 1976 and released in 1977, in which she played the mother of her lifelong friend Carlos Kroeber. Alas, the film got bad reviews and did poorly with audiences.
She did accept to make other things for TV, like specials, or single episodes of shows like "Aplauso" (not to be confused with the 1978 Spanish series of the same title), in which a different repertory play was adapted for TV every week. But she would only make another "novela" in 1980, when author Gilberto Braga invited her to what would become one of his biggest hits, Água Viva (1980) (lit. "Jelly Fish"). At 57 she looked more beautiful than the young stars around her. As an eccentric millionairess who had a bolder, more outgoing attitude to life than people half her age, she won the hearts of a whole new generation who had heard about her but was seeing her for the first time. As a tribute to her, towards the end Braga wrote a highly dramatic scene in which, following a depressive bout triggered by the mysterious death of a dear friend, she took a whole bottle of sleeping pills and, as she played again and again an old recording of a famous French song, went on a long monologue explaining to the people she had loved and lost why she had decided to join them.
When the scene was aired, even her most unabashed fans were taken aback by how intimately and with how much intensity the actress they loved so much could relate to the camera. For some of them the scene brought back memories of her doing Jean Cocteau's "The Human Voice" live on TV, in the 1950s, directed by Adolfo Celi, with whom, she has always been very proud to say, she learned her craft.
The late 1980s and early 1990s were a sad time for the Brazilian film industry. A time of uncertainty when it became extremely difficult to raise money for any kind of project, to the point when (in 1990-91) production practically stopped. For actors, much as they all relished the idea of making films, it became the sort of thing you jump at if it comes your way, but you never count on. With Tônia it wasn't any different. With no film projects in view, at the peak of her prestige as one of the leading figures of the Brazilian theater, she enjoyed very long runs in Rio and São Paulo, as well as touring other Brazilian cities in plays such as Marguerite Duras' "L'Amante Anglaise" (once again with Paulo Autran), John Murrell's "Memoir" (as Sarah Bernhardt, with her son Cecil), William Luce's "Zelda" (as Zelda Fitzgerald), Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance," Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard," and "As Atrizes" ("The Actresses") by the Brazilian actor and author Juca de Oliveira.
In 1986 she appeared in "Quartett," a strange play by German author Rainer Muller, in which she played Merteuil, the vicious aristocrat of the famous classic "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," as seen many years after the events of that novel. Alone in her mansion, she talked to the ghost of her former lover Valmont (played by Sérgio Britto), in what turned out to be a tragicomic comment on modern life. Under the brilliant direction of Gerald Thomas, she came up with what was hailed as the top of her achievements as a stage actress, for which, once again she was given a Molière Award, now in the honorary category.
By now the Vera Cruz film company ("The Brazilian Hollywood") had become a legend and she was constantly asked if she didn't miss making films. She certainly did and in 1987 gladly took the chance to start again by making three films in a row. Early in the year, she joined a large number of stars (including Paulo Autran, if not with her in the same scene) who played cameo roles in Fogo e Paixão (1989) (lit "Fire and Passion"), co-directed by Marcio Kogan and Isay Weinfeld. Released in 1988, it turned out to be a fascinating film in which the big joke was to see her as a beggar after the endless series of rich, sophisticated women audiences had grown accustomed to see her play, especially on TV. Next she played the male lead's mother in Ruy Guerra's Fábula de la Bella Palomera (1988) (aka "A Bela Palomera"), a Brazilian-Spanish co-production released in 1988.
As soon as it was finished, she filmed Sonhos de Menina Moça (1988) (aka "Best Wishes"), as the matriarch of a large and rich family. An ambitious project by director Tereza Trautman, when it was generally released in 1988 after a round of international festivals, the film was poorly received and hasn't been seen much, the general line being that there were too many script problems. Late in 1988 Tônia played the grandmother telling the story in O Gato de Botas Extraterrestre (1990) (lit. "The Extraterrestrial Puss in Boots"), released in 1990. Directed by Wilson Rodrigues, this well-done film for children was her last in 16 years.
As active as ever in the theater, in 2002 she celebrated her 80th birthday on the stage, in Rio, as the old lady in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's famous play, "The Visit." During the curtain call of the first performance for the general public, after a long standing ovation, having read in the press that it was her very special birthday, the whole audience broke into a warm "Happy Birthday." Being in the cast, the author of this biography was on the stage with the others, and like them has not forgotten the expression of gratitude in the faces of the people who paid her such a spontaneous tribute. She had become what they would like to be at her age. She was a star all right, a very big one, but she was their own, tangible star, and they loved her for that.
In 2004, along with several other people who had known or worked with him, she filmed a series of interviews for Vinicius (2005), a documentary by Miguel Faria Jr. about one of her dearest friends, the poet and composer Vinicius de Moraes. Released in 2005, it turned out to be a wonderful film, getting rave reviews and setting a new box office record for a documentary. While it was still making the rounds, in 2006, Tônia worked for the first time with the young and enormously talented director Laís Bodanzky, who cast her as the old lady who comes with her lifelong companion (wonderfully played by the great Leonardo Villar) to the ballroom of the title in Chega de Saudade (2007).
Among a great number of characters (beautifully played by an impeccable cast), the events of one single evening concentrate on three couples: one very young, one middle-aged, and one elderly. When the film was generally released in 2008 (after a preview in 2007 at the Brasília Film Festival) it became a huge success. Lots of people told they had come back to see it again shortly after the first time, their favorite moment being the scene towards the end, in which, out of jealousy, the cranky old man played by Leo Villar decides to leave without saying goodbye. From the top of the stairs, Tônia stops him calling it a shame to leave like that, not simply because of the bad manners, but especially because of the defeat attitude in life.
He asks her what she expects from him. Her stern face dissolving into a beautiful smile, she says, "Dance with me!" He goes back and they dance. In a long arc shot, as the camera shows the entire cast watching them, it becomes possible to see how moved they all are to witness this absolutely magical moment. Then the camera cuts to Tônia and Leo Villar, as she kisses him saying, "I love you- I love you-"
When the film was released, perhaps because of having done it so many times while watching these two live on the stage, at the peak of their big scene audiences often burst into a very loud applause. At 84, Tônia Carrero, the film actress, had made the best film of her entire career. Just before it was released, in 2007, she made her last stage appearance to date in a play by the Russian author Alexei Arbuzov known in America as "Do You Do Somersaults?" and in England as "Old World." With her on the stage was the much loved actor Mauro Mendonça. The director was none other than her own grandson Carlos Thiré (aka Carlos Artur Thiré), whose sister, 'Luisa Thiré', and younger brother, Miguel Thiré, are also actors. While Tônia's youngest grandson, João Thiré, is pursuing a career in music, her great-grandson Vitor Thiré (Luisa's son) has already made his acting debut in the TV series "Filhos do Carnaval."
Also in 2007, a year tainted by sadness with the death of Paulo Autran, a theater was named after her in Rio, not long after she had been decorated by the Brazilian government (she had already been decorated by the French government, who made her a "Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres" for making some of the best French playwrights well-known in Brazil). Then, in 2008, during the ceremony of the prestigious Shell Theater Award she was given a Life Achievement Award, presented to her by her good friend, the cartoonist Chico Caruso, and received a thunderous standing ovation that didn't seem to finish, from an audience of actors, directors, playwrights, producers, designers, journalists and friends who had loved her for longer than they could remember.
But the biggest tribute came every night from the audience that had come to see her on the stage in "Um Barco para o Sonho" (the Arbuzov play). At the end of scene four, she told the doctor played by Mauro Mendonça that, being a circus artist, she had once made a film in Moscow. He wanted to know more about it and she described the one scene she had in the film as being a routine with a horse. Impressed by the passionate way she talked about it, to her big surprise, he invited her out to dinner. The lights went out, circus music started playing, and there she was, at 28, more beautiful than ever, riding her horse around the arena, in a clip from "Tico Tico no Fubá." Those who had seen the film were always very moved. Those who hadn't marveled at her beauty and, like with all movie stars, the way the camera seemed to be caressing her. Invariably, they all burst into applause to the woman who had given so much of herself for both theater and films to be something Brazilians can be so immensely proud of.
In 1940 she married the artist Carlos Thiré, who was already creating the comic books for which he is now recognized as a major name of the early years of comics in Brazil. The young couple's only child, the actor, director and drama teacher Cecil Thiré was born on May 28, 1943. In early 1947, she was invited to appear as one of the schoolgirls in Querida Susana (1947) (aka "Querida Suzana") (literally, "Darling Suzana"), directed by Alberto Pieralisi and starring Anselmo Duarte, who was soon to become the biggest leading man in Brazilian films. In her film debut, she had nothing to do but smile. At her insistence, however, she was given one line. When the film was completed, they asked her how she should be credited. She had no idea. Maria Antonietta Portocarrero surely didn't sound like an actress' name. She was having singing lessons at the time and told her teacher about it. The woman thought for a moment and said, "From 'Antonietta' we take 'Tônia.' By breaking the surname in two and keeping the second half, we get 'Carrero.' Your name is going to be Tônia Carrero." And so it was. For her family and closest friends, however, she has always been Mariinha, the nickname given to her when she was born.
Shortly after the making of "Querida Suzana", Thiré got a scholarship and went to Paris to study art with the famous French painter André Lothe (1885-1962). Tônia accompanied him and, once there, enrolled in an acting course named "Education par les Jeux Dramatiques", directed by the famous actor-director Jean-Louis Barrault. As she likes to recall, half of her classmates were horrified to have among them someone so cheerful and healthy in direct contrast to the somber atmosphere of those post-war years. The other half loved her precisely for that.
In December of 1947, the Thirés came back to Brazil and Tônia started looking for work. In 1948 she was invited by 'Fernando de Barros' to play the sister of his wife Maria Della Costa in his first film as a director, Caminhos do Sul (1949) (lit. "Paths of the South"). When the film was released, in late 1949, the two actresses were praised for their beauty, presence, and adroit acting. Fernando then cast Tônia as the lead in Quando a Noite Acaba (1950) (lit. "When the Night Is Over"), made in 1949, right after "Caminhos do Sul." The story was set in Rio and the film was released in that city first. To the director's great annoyance, when it was later shown in São Paulo the title was changed to "Perdida pela Paixão" (lit. "Lost by Passion"), which, besides being misleading, has often caused the two titles to appear in the filmographies of cast and crew as two different films.
Whatever the title, the film did well and Tônia's performance was hailed as a great accomplishment for its lack of pretense and its amazing blend of intensity and restraint, audiences being very impressed by her awesome death scene at the end. She got the admiration of critics and audiences alike for being a stunningly beautiful woman who didn't rest on that, one critic (Décio Vieira Ottoni) going as far as calling her performance "the best by any actress ever seen in Brazilian films so far."
December 13, 1949 became a historical date for the Brazilian theater. On that day, at Rio's Teatro Copacabana, Tônia Carrero and a young lawyer named Paulo Autran made their joint stage debut in "Um Deus Dormiu Lá em Casa", a comedy by the Brazilian author Guilherme Figueiredo, based on the Greek myth of Amphitryon. In the years to come, Tônia and Paulo would turn into household names for their work, together and separately, in films, on the stage, and on TV. 1949 marked the beginning of a legendary partnership that lasted until 2004 when they were seen acting together for the last time in the TV mini-series One Heart (2004) (lit. "One Heart"), as an elderly couple dining at the restaurant where the young actors and directors who were starting a new phase of the Brazilian theater in São Paulo gathered every night, in the late 1940s, the inside joke being that two of the young actors they saw at a nearby table and talked about were ... Tônia Carrero and Paulo Autran!
The creation of the Vera Cruz film company in late 1949 attracted a great number of actors and Tônia was no exception. In 1952 she was seen in the studio's most lavish production, Tico-Tico no Fubá (1952), about the life of that song's composer, Zequinha de Abreu, played by Anselmo Duarte. Tônia was Branca, the circus ballerina the composer falls in love with. The film represented Brazil in the Cannes Film Festival and, like the composer whose life it portrayed, audiences all over fell in love with the beautiful woman who rode a horse with so much skill and enchanted the whole town where the circus stayed for a while, until finding out that she too had fallen in love with the composer. The director was Adolfo Celi, an Italian actor who had come to Brazil in 1948 and in time became one of the country's most influential directors and drama teachers. During the making of the film, in 1951, they fell in love and decided to stay together. That was the end of Tônia's marriage to Carlos Thiré and Adolfo Celi's relationship with the first lady of the Brazilian theater, the celebrated actress Cacilda Becker.
Soon after the enormous success of "Tico Tico no Fubá," Tônia was seen in Fernando de Barros' Appassionata (1952), a somewhat turgid melodrama in which she played a pianist who is loved by Anselmo Duarte. The film did well in spite of mixed reviews and among all her films remains the one in which, beautifully photographed by British cinematographer Ray Sturgess, she looks more stunning. Her last film for Vera Cruz was É Proibido Beijar (1954) (lit. "Kissing Forbidden"). A light comedy directed by Ugo Lombardi, in which for the third time in a row she acted with Zbigniew Ziembinski, the father-figure of the modern Brazilian theater, the film looks dated today, its biggest asset being once again Tônia's striking beauty.
As it was being made, in 1953, pre-production began for the studio's most ambitious project, a film version of "Ana Terra", one of the segments of Érico Veríssimo's monumental epic novel "O Tempo e o Vento" ("Time and the Wind"). Tônia was to star and Celi to direct. Alas, the film was not to be. Vera Cruz collapsed, its contract players, directors, and technicians disbanded, and all that remains today are the beautiful photographic studies suggesting that Ana Terra could have been Tônia's most emblematic film role. In retrospect, Tônia's greatest moment at Vera Cruz remains the scene in "Tico Tico no Fubá" in which, as the circus caravan moves away from the small town where she had met the composer, she and Ziembinski are seen at the coachman's seat of the leading wagon, talking about how life makes you leave things behind, and how hard it can be to make choices.
With the end of hers and Celi's Vera Cruz tenure, they decided to settle in Rio, where, along with Paulo Autran, they founded the famous Tônia-Celi-Autran theater company. From 1956 to 1961, Celi directed, Tônia and Paulo starred, and some of the best actors of the day joined the cast in carefully selected plays by Shakespeare, Goldoni, Lillian Hellman, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pirandello, George Axelrod, Françoise Sagan, and Brazilian authors such as Osman Lins. The company's success was immense, to the point of extending a tour of the southern states of Brazil to Buenos Aires, where Argentinian audiences didn't seem to mind seeing "Othello" in Portuguese.
However, the theatergoers' gain was the moviegoers' loss. Her Vera Cruz days behind her, Tônia turned down an offer to make films in Italy (she dreaded the idea of being away from her son) and became essentially a stage actress. In 1955 she was seen on the screen once more, opposite Arturo de Córdova in Mãos Sangrentas (1955) (released in the US as "The Violent and the Damned"), a prison melodrama made the year before at another studio by the Argentinian director Carlos Hugo Christensen, and then went on a film hiatus of six years, during which she kept a hectic schedule of theater and TV work.
In 1960, during the company's exceptionally successful Buenos Aires season, she was invited by the illustrious director and actor Lautaro Murúa to play his wife in his own film Alias Gardelito (1961). She completed her scenes in four days at neck breaking speed so as to be able to come back to Rio where she was being expected to fulfill a theater engagement. She couldn't possibly know then that, following its release in 1961, the film she had no idea she would be making when she arrived to Buenos Aires would become a classic of the Argentinian cinema, the big irony being that, since it was never released in Brazil and this was before the VHS/DVD era, she has never seen it.
For a while it looked as if the early 1960s would be the beginning of a new phase of her work as a film actress. Early in 1961, almost back to back, she made two films, both released in 1962. First, Carnival of Crime (1962), a Brazilian-American-Argentinian co-production directed by George Cahan and starring the internationally famous French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont (released in the US in 1964 as "Carnival of Crime", the film is available on DVD). Then, Esse Rio Que Eu Amo (1962) (lit. "My Beloved Rio"), an episode film directed by Carlos Hugo Christensen, in which she played an unfaithful woman in the modern version of a story by Brazil's greatest writer, Machado de Assis.
In 1962, when "Esse Rio que Eu Amo" was released, her delicate performance and great beauty at 38 so much impressed the European producers of Copacabana Palace (1962), about to start shooting in Rio, that they offered her the juicy part of the elegant wife of a jewel thief who acted in the famous hotel of the title. Released the same year it was made, this Italian-French co-production directed by Steno (also known as Stefano Vanzina), and starring the popular Italian actor Walter Chiari, became something of a cult movie of its kind. In 1979, when Adolfo Celi came to Rio to direct her in the theater for the first time after the break-up of their marriage in 1962, he jokingly told Tônia that he had never really stopped seeing her, for every other time he turned on the TV in his Rome home, there she was in "Copacabana Palace."
In 1963 Celi had gone back to Italy, where he became an amazingly active actor in international films, his best remembered role being Emilio Largo, the villain who defies James Bond in Thunderball (1965). In 1964 Tônia married the engineer César Thedim (1930-2000), who was to have a brief career as a film producer. They separated in 1977, and she didn't marry again. Like Paulo Autran, after the end of Tônia-Celi-Autran, she founded a new theater company and went on producing and acting in plays by world-wide famous authors like Ibsen (her Nora in "A Doll's House", in which she was directed by her son, Cecil Thiré, and for which she won an award, stands as one of her stage performances people remember more fondly), Feydeau, Somerset Maugham, and Tennessee Williams, as well as Brazilian authors such as Domingos de Oliveira.
In 1967, during the military regime ("the years of lead") when censorship made life hell for those whose work had to do with theater, cinema, music, and literature, she read a play named "Navalha na Carne" (lit. "Razor in the Flesh"), by a brilliant young Brazilian author named Plínio Marcos, and decided to do it. It told the story of an aging prostitute living with her pimp in the shabby pension of a poor and dangerous neighborhood where she walked the streets every night. She can hardly get clients anymore, the pimp gets mad at her, they go through a ghastly night during which he beats her, takes all her money, humiliates her, and leaves her to her fate. Alone, she cries like hell, than pulls herself together, sits down and very calmly eats a sandwich as the curtain comes down. The play was banned by the censors and couldn't be performed anywhere in Brazil. But Tônia fought for it so ferociously and with so much intelligence that the authorities ended up thinking it wiser not to go against a woman the whole country adored, and she was granted permission to do it.
At the peak of her beauty and charm, Tônia gained weight, stopped having her hair done, developed a heavy walk and a clumsy way to move around, learned how to speak with a most ungracious croaky voice, and, under the clever direction of Fauzi Arap, came up with a performance that has become part of the history of the Brazilian theater, for which she became the first actress to win the prestigious Molière Award by unanimous vote. People went to the theater and for a moment their minds boggled. It took them a while to realize that the woman on the stage really was Tônia Carrero. Needless to say, there was a standing ovation every night.
However, when two years later the play was filmed by Braz Chediak and she was invited to repeat on screen her most famous stage role, she turned it down. As she explained, she had done the play for more than a year, all over Brazil, and it was a marvelous experience. But now she was through with it and had even done another play (Frank D. Gilroy's "The Subject Was Roses", in which she played her own son's mother). Along with the suicidal woman in Terence Rattigan's "The Deep Blue Sea", the prostitute in Plínio Marcos' play had been one of the two most straining roles she had ever played. While acting in both she felt she was using up her emotional energy. Playing the prostitute had been immensely rewarding, but she didn't want to go through it again. She suggested Glauce Rocha, one of Brazil's most gifted actresses, whom she admired and was personally very fond of. Her suggestion was accepted and "Navalha na Carne" became one of the last film credits in Glauce Rocha's sadly short career.
In late 1968 Tônia gave a fine performance as the lead in Hugo Kusnet's Tempo de Violência (1969) (lit. "Time of Violence"), a vigorous film about the risk in politically deranged times of thinking that if you mind your own business you will stay out of trouble. The film got good reviews and did well with the public. The same year it was released, Tônia appeared as an elegant 19th century French courtesan in Sangue do Meu Sangue (1969) (lit. "My Own Blood"), a TV series, or rather a "novela" (the Portuguese word to define a genre that flourished in Brazil in the 1960s and doesn't quite have an equivalent in English speaking countries, the best way to describe it being, "Imagine a mini-series, with daily episodes like all mini-series, but lasting from six to eight months").
It was the beginning of the great phase of her career as a TV actress. In 1970 she did something very few actresses in the world (if any at all) must have done. At the same time as she appeared every night on the stage as Lady MacBeth with Paulo Autran in the title role, she played the lead in Pigmalião 70 (1970), her first "novela" for TV Globo, Brazil's biggest TV studio. Such was her success in it, that all over Brazil, hairdressers had a hard time trying to make room for all the women who wanted to get a "Dona Cristina cut" (her character's name). After a number of Globo "novelas" she became tired of the hoopla and asked to be released from her contract. She decided to concentrate on her work in the theater, which was always phenomenally successful, and eventually make a film, like Mário Carneiro's Gordos e Magros (1976) (lit. "The Fat Ones and the Thin Ones"), made in early 1976 and released in 1977, in which she played the mother of her lifelong friend Carlos Kroeber. Alas, the film got bad reviews and did poorly with audiences.
She did accept to make other things for TV, like specials, or single episodes of shows like "Aplauso" (not to be confused with the 1978 Spanish series of the same title), in which a different repertory play was adapted for TV every week. But she would only make another "novela" in 1980, when author Gilberto Braga invited her to what would become one of his biggest hits, Água Viva (1980) (lit. "Jelly Fish"). At 57 she looked more beautiful than the young stars around her. As an eccentric millionairess who had a bolder, more outgoing attitude to life than people half her age, she won the hearts of a whole new generation who had heard about her but was seeing her for the first time. As a tribute to her, towards the end Braga wrote a highly dramatic scene in which, following a depressive bout triggered by the mysterious death of a dear friend, she took a whole bottle of sleeping pills and, as she played again and again an old recording of a famous French song, went on a long monologue explaining to the people she had loved and lost why she had decided to join them.
When the scene was aired, even her most unabashed fans were taken aback by how intimately and with how much intensity the actress they loved so much could relate to the camera. For some of them the scene brought back memories of her doing Jean Cocteau's "The Human Voice" live on TV, in the 1950s, directed by Adolfo Celi, with whom, she has always been very proud to say, she learned her craft.
The late 1980s and early 1990s were a sad time for the Brazilian film industry. A time of uncertainty when it became extremely difficult to raise money for any kind of project, to the point when (in 1990-91) production practically stopped. For actors, much as they all relished the idea of making films, it became the sort of thing you jump at if it comes your way, but you never count on. With Tônia it wasn't any different. With no film projects in view, at the peak of her prestige as one of the leading figures of the Brazilian theater, she enjoyed very long runs in Rio and São Paulo, as well as touring other Brazilian cities in plays such as Marguerite Duras' "L'Amante Anglaise" (once again with Paulo Autran), John Murrell's "Memoir" (as Sarah Bernhardt, with her son Cecil), William Luce's "Zelda" (as Zelda Fitzgerald), Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance," Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard," and "As Atrizes" ("The Actresses") by the Brazilian actor and author Juca de Oliveira.
In 1986 she appeared in "Quartett," a strange play by German author Rainer Muller, in which she played Merteuil, the vicious aristocrat of the famous classic "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," as seen many years after the events of that novel. Alone in her mansion, she talked to the ghost of her former lover Valmont (played by Sérgio Britto), in what turned out to be a tragicomic comment on modern life. Under the brilliant direction of Gerald Thomas, she came up with what was hailed as the top of her achievements as a stage actress, for which, once again she was given a Molière Award, now in the honorary category.
By now the Vera Cruz film company ("The Brazilian Hollywood") had become a legend and she was constantly asked if she didn't miss making films. She certainly did and in 1987 gladly took the chance to start again by making three films in a row. Early in the year, she joined a large number of stars (including Paulo Autran, if not with her in the same scene) who played cameo roles in Fogo e Paixão (1989) (lit "Fire and Passion"), co-directed by Marcio Kogan and Isay Weinfeld. Released in 1988, it turned out to be a fascinating film in which the big joke was to see her as a beggar after the endless series of rich, sophisticated women audiences had grown accustomed to see her play, especially on TV. Next she played the male lead's mother in Ruy Guerra's Fábula de la Bella Palomera (1988) (aka "A Bela Palomera"), a Brazilian-Spanish co-production released in 1988.
As soon as it was finished, she filmed Sonhos de Menina Moça (1988) (aka "Best Wishes"), as the matriarch of a large and rich family. An ambitious project by director Tereza Trautman, when it was generally released in 1988 after a round of international festivals, the film was poorly received and hasn't been seen much, the general line being that there were too many script problems. Late in 1988 Tônia played the grandmother telling the story in O Gato de Botas Extraterrestre (1990) (lit. "The Extraterrestrial Puss in Boots"), released in 1990. Directed by Wilson Rodrigues, this well-done film for children was her last in 16 years.
As active as ever in the theater, in 2002 she celebrated her 80th birthday on the stage, in Rio, as the old lady in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's famous play, "The Visit." During the curtain call of the first performance for the general public, after a long standing ovation, having read in the press that it was her very special birthday, the whole audience broke into a warm "Happy Birthday." Being in the cast, the author of this biography was on the stage with the others, and like them has not forgotten the expression of gratitude in the faces of the people who paid her such a spontaneous tribute. She had become what they would like to be at her age. She was a star all right, a very big one, but she was their own, tangible star, and they loved her for that.
In 2004, along with several other people who had known or worked with him, she filmed a series of interviews for Vinicius (2005), a documentary by Miguel Faria Jr. about one of her dearest friends, the poet and composer Vinicius de Moraes. Released in 2005, it turned out to be a wonderful film, getting rave reviews and setting a new box office record for a documentary. While it was still making the rounds, in 2006, Tônia worked for the first time with the young and enormously talented director Laís Bodanzky, who cast her as the old lady who comes with her lifelong companion (wonderfully played by the great Leonardo Villar) to the ballroom of the title in Chega de Saudade (2007).
Among a great number of characters (beautifully played by an impeccable cast), the events of one single evening concentrate on three couples: one very young, one middle-aged, and one elderly. When the film was generally released in 2008 (after a preview in 2007 at the Brasília Film Festival) it became a huge success. Lots of people told they had come back to see it again shortly after the first time, their favorite moment being the scene towards the end, in which, out of jealousy, the cranky old man played by Leo Villar decides to leave without saying goodbye. From the top of the stairs, Tônia stops him calling it a shame to leave like that, not simply because of the bad manners, but especially because of the defeat attitude in life.
He asks her what she expects from him. Her stern face dissolving into a beautiful smile, she says, "Dance with me!" He goes back and they dance. In a long arc shot, as the camera shows the entire cast watching them, it becomes possible to see how moved they all are to witness this absolutely magical moment. Then the camera cuts to Tônia and Leo Villar, as she kisses him saying, "I love you- I love you-"
When the film was released, perhaps because of having done it so many times while watching these two live on the stage, at the peak of their big scene audiences often burst into a very loud applause. At 84, Tônia Carrero, the film actress, had made the best film of her entire career. Just before it was released, in 2007, she made her last stage appearance to date in a play by the Russian author Alexei Arbuzov known in America as "Do You Do Somersaults?" and in England as "Old World." With her on the stage was the much loved actor Mauro Mendonça. The director was none other than her own grandson Carlos Thiré (aka Carlos Artur Thiré), whose sister, 'Luisa Thiré', and younger brother, Miguel Thiré, are also actors. While Tônia's youngest grandson, João Thiré, is pursuing a career in music, her great-grandson Vitor Thiré (Luisa's son) has already made his acting debut in the TV series "Filhos do Carnaval."
Also in 2007, a year tainted by sadness with the death of Paulo Autran, a theater was named after her in Rio, not long after she had been decorated by the Brazilian government (she had already been decorated by the French government, who made her a "Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres" for making some of the best French playwrights well-known in Brazil). Then, in 2008, during the ceremony of the prestigious Shell Theater Award she was given a Life Achievement Award, presented to her by her good friend, the cartoonist Chico Caruso, and received a thunderous standing ovation that didn't seem to finish, from an audience of actors, directors, playwrights, producers, designers, journalists and friends who had loved her for longer than they could remember.
But the biggest tribute came every night from the audience that had come to see her on the stage in "Um Barco para o Sonho" (the Arbuzov play). At the end of scene four, she told the doctor played by Mauro Mendonça that, being a circus artist, she had once made a film in Moscow. He wanted to know more about it and she described the one scene she had in the film as being a routine with a horse. Impressed by the passionate way she talked about it, to her big surprise, he invited her out to dinner. The lights went out, circus music started playing, and there she was, at 28, more beautiful than ever, riding her horse around the arena, in a clip from "Tico Tico no Fubá." Those who had seen the film were always very moved. Those who hadn't marveled at her beauty and, like with all movie stars, the way the camera seemed to be caressing her. Invariably, they all burst into applause to the woman who had given so much of herself for both theater and films to be something Brazilians can be so immensely proud of.
