Actress Helena Rojo died this Saturday at the age of 79 after a battle with cancer. The soap opera, film and theater actor was distinguished by a long career that began as a model in the 1960s and later developed into films and soap operas in the 1980s and 1990s. Her most memorable performances include the film Más negro que la noche (1975) and the telenovela El Privilegio de Amar (1998). The actress won the Ariel Award twice for her roles in the films Fin de Fiesta (1972) and Misterio (1981). ).
Rojo began working secretly from her family as a model for commercials for products such as soap. María Helena Lamadrid Ruiz was born in Mexico City in 1944. She began acting training at a young age with the historical directors Carlos Ancira and José Luis Ibañez. His first roles were only a few lines, but in the early 1970s he began a successful film career that included appearances in films such as The Suicide Club, The Cubs and Fox Trot.
The actress admitted in various interviews that she was heavily criticized for her transition from films to television. “I was very supported in the cinema, they took care of me, they took care of my lyrics, they took care of my lighting, they took care of my wardrobe,” she told journalist Oscar Uriel in 2021. Rojo was excited about the rise of soap operas and took the opportunity to enrich their range of interpretations. . “Once I knew what I was going to do on TV, I dedicated myself to watching TV and repeating everything I heard. Once I managed to repeat it, my next challenge was to change what I heard and repeat it with a different tone,” he said in the same interview.
When Televisa produced most of the soap operas produced in Mexico, Rojo was one of the network's star productions. His most notable works include “The Privilege of Loving,” “Hold Me Very Tight,” “Wild Heart,” “Ramona,” and “Wild Beasts.” She played the role of both the protagonist and the villain, which contributed to her popularity in Mexico. “I don’t think many people manage to be protagonists. “It's not easy at all to be a protagonist,” he commented in a 2021 interview.
Parallel to his successes on television, Rojo appeared in various theater productions in Mexico City on weekends. The actress admitted several times that her successful career had an impact on her personal life. She had three children and married three times, one of them to fellow actor Juan Ferrara. Critical and demanding of the roles she played, the actress claimed that she avoided seeing the end result of the productions in which she starred. “I don’t like to sit and watch what I’m doing. “I don’t like film premieres, I don’t watch my soap operas,” he told journalist Mara Patricia Castañeda in 2022.
Her last work was in the 2023 telenovela Vencer la culpa, in which she played Ángeles, the grandmother of a family. “In the middle of the soap opera he found out that he had this cancer and it was very advanced. She told me that she had to be absent and we saw how the character could justifiably disappear, but she insisted on finishing this work. “It was a very brave decision,” remembers producer Rosy Ocampo at Foro TV.
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