Enrique Riveros
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Enrique Riveros Fernandez (1906–1954), was a Chilean actor who worked primarily in films in France, most notably with director Jean Renoir, before retiring from the screen and moving back to Chile to raise his children.[1]
Riveros was the eldest son of prominent businessman Enrique Riveros Chilean Cross and Mrs. Hortensia Fernández Prado. As a teenager he traveled to Paris in 1922 to study agronomy, but promptly and against his family's, became part of the art world and the historical avant-garde film that dominated the European scene and Paris, mingling with: Picasso, Modigliani, ManRay, Gertrude Stein, Coco Chanel, Buñuel, Lee Miller, the Viscount de Noailles, among others, formed the social circle that unfolded for ten years and where he developed his prodigious acting career.[2]
Enrique Riveros worked in Europe as a leading man in more than fifteen films, which include Spökbaronen directed by Gustaf Edgren (1927), Majestät schneidet Bubiköpfedirected by Ragnar Hyltén-Cavallius (1928), Le tournoi dans la cite (1928) and Le bled (1929), directed by Jean Renoir, obtaining the latter film the award of the French Government at the time. The following decade included his work in films by Alberto Cavalcanti, Dans une île perdue (1931), À mi-chemin du ciel (1931) and The Cellar (1930) directed by Benito Perojo, with the actress and singer Concha Piquer as co-star and Nicole et sa vertu (1932) by Rene Hervil, among others. Before the outbreak of World War II, Enrique Riveros returned to Chile, where he worked on a couple of film projects and starred in the film El hombre que se llevaron (1946) by Jorge "Coke" Delano, with the role of defendant Alberto Rivero received the prize for Best Actor National Film. Riveros died in 1954, leaving a legacy all but forgotten.
His fame and success were so bright at the time, continuously contained in the European film magazine covers, being a gallant comparable with Rudolph Valentino. Rivero transcended fame so much in his native Chile, that in 1927 the newspaper El Mercurio sent a correspondent to interview him in Paris.
"And 1927 has brought a surprise to Parisians rise always used to seeing European artists. This year has been a South American, and something even more exotic: a Chilean, Enrique Riveros, who imposes his name on screen, movie posters and magazines in Paris. His films show him as an actor has all the powers required by the filmmaker: his youth that reaches just 20 years old, a slim athletic body, an attractive physical and strong and gifted artistic temperament "[This quote needs a citation]