Silvia Pinal, Last ‘Diva’ of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema, Dies at 93
Mexican cinema and Hispanic arts are in mourning. On November 28, the death of actress Silvia Pinal was confirmed, after she died in a hospital in the south of Mexico City.
Pinal died at the age of 93, after battling a urinary tract infection, due to the advanced age of the last diva of Mexican cinema.
According to information from Multimedios Television, Silvia Pinal died at 17:50 local time. A tribute is being prepared at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.
The last great diva of Mexican cinema
Silvia Pinal Hidalgo was born on September 16, 1931, in Mexico City. At an early age, she felt a desire for artistic expression, which she combined with her work as a typist, which allowed her to work for the Kodak company at the age of 14, while studying at the Instituto Nacional de las Bellas Artes, under the tutelage of Carlos Pellicer.
It was not until 1947 that Pinal made her theater debut, with the staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare, and later acted in some radio soap operas of the Mexican radio station XEQ.
Her big screen debut came in 1949 in the film El pecado de Laura. Due to her great beauty and histrionic talents, Silvia Pinal later alternated with great actors of the time such as Rafael Banquells, with whom she married years later, as well as Pedro Infante, German Valdes ‘Tin Tan’ and Mario Moreno ‘Cantinflas’.
Buñuel’s muse
In 1961, Silvia Pinal starred in the film Viridiana, by Spanish director Luis Buñuel, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Pinal also starred in another of the Spanish filmmaker’s iconic films, The Exterminating Angel.
In 1987, Silvia Pinal produced and hosted the Televisa program “Mujer: Casos de la Vida Real,” which remained on the air for two decades and with which the actress alternated her altruistic work with her work on stage.
In her personal life, Silvia Pinal was married four times, to Rafael Banquells, Gustavo Alatriste, Enrique Guzman and the former governor of Tlaxcala Tulio Hernandez. She had four children, of whom Luis Enrique and Alejandra Guzman, with Enrique Guzman, and Silvia Pasquel, from her marriage to Rafael Banquells, survive.
Her last appearance on television was in the telenovela “Mi Marido tiene Familia,” broadcast in 2018 by Univision, and in 2022 she was part of the children’s play “Caperucita ¿Que onda con tu abuelita?”
