Alfonso Arau (born January 11, 1932) is a Mexican actor and director.
Arau was born in Mexico City, Mexico, the son of a doctor. Arau directed the films Zapata: The Dream of a Hero, Like Water for Chocolate (adapted from the novel written by his ex-wife Laura Esquivel), A Walk in the Clouds with Keanu Reeves and Anthony Quinn, and the Hallmark Hall of Fame production A Painted House, adapted from the John Grisham novel of the same name. Among others, he played the role of antagonist "El Guapo" in Three Amigos (USA, 1986), a comedy with Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Chevy Chase. He also played Captain Herrera in Sam Peckinpah's 1969 western, The Wild Bunch and Juan the smuggler in Romancing the Stone.
In 1973 he acted in and directed Calzónzin Inspector, a movie based on a Mexican comic called Los Supermachos, by the great Mexican cartoonist Rius, although Rius disapproved of the movie. The movie is about two indigenous Mexicans who are mistakenly taken for government inspectors from the capital by the corrupt mayor of a small town. It is a humorous political critique, aimed squarely at the then ruling party PRI and its caciques, in a time when freedom of speech in regard to political matters was highly restricted. There are at least two versions of the movie, the shorter one having some scenes deleted, the most notable one shows the killing of a renegade farmer by a police officer shooting him in the back.
A notable movie was El rincón de las vírgenes (Mexico, 1972), "The Virgins' Corner" where he plays the assistant to a fake mystical doctor traveling from town to town, reminiscing about their travels when a group of women decide to propose the doctor for sainthood. The movie is set in the 1920s in rural Mexico.
In December 2004 the Santa Fe Film Festival bestowed its Luminaria Award for lifetime achievement in cinema to Alfonso Arau as a cornerstone to its five-day festival. Jon Bowman, executive director of the Santa Fe Film Festival said, "Arau is truly a renaissance artist, with a deep and innate understanding of all phases of the cinematic medium."
Arau has had a long and fruitful career both in front and behind the camera and is one of the most prominent filmmakers of the Latino community in Hollywood. Arau was a drama disciple of Seki Sano - a Japanese teacher, classmate of Lee Strassberg with Stanislavski in Russia - and traveled the world from 1964 to 1968 with his one-man show of Pantomime Happy Madness after studying with Etienne Dacroux and Jacques Lecoq in Paris. A renowned writer-producer-director-actor in theater and films for the past twenty years, Arau directed in 1969 his first feature film _Barefoot Eagle (1969)_, which he also starred. He has directed many films in Mexico among them _Calzonzin Inspector (1973)_ and Mojado Power (1979). He has received 6 Arieles, the Mexican equivalent to the Oscar, and numerous international film awards. Arau has acted in a number of Mexican and Hollywood films, including _The Wild Bunch (1969)_, Topo, El (1970) Mojado Power (1979), Used Cars (1980), Romancing the Stone (1984), ¡Three Amigos! (1986) and Committed (2000). In addition to _Like Water for Chocolate (1992)_, his directing credits include Walk in the Clouds, A (1995) with 'Keanu Reeves' and 'Picking Up The Pieces' (2000)_ with 'Woody Allen'. His most recent work is _"Magnificent Amberson, The" (2002) (mini)_, based on the script of Orson Welles and the novel by Booth Tarkington.
