Cláudio Luís Murgel Corrêa e Castro (February 27, 1928 – August 16, 2005) was a Brazilian actor who appeared in over fifty Brazilian telenovelas. He was known for playing Mr. Leopoldo in Força de um Desejo (1999); Count Klaus in Chocolate com Pimenta (2003); Gugu in A Gata Comeu (1985); Vidal in Eu Prometo; and Archangel Gabriel in Deus Nos Acuda.
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Biography
First years and education
Castro was born in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1928. Study at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes na Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and study in France, returned to Brazil after graduating and began his career as an artist as a painter, but the theater soon entered his life. He majored in theater direction at the Fundação Brasileira de Teatro (FBT).
Career
Right from his debut in 1954 with the amateur theater group O Tablado, he stood out for his strong stage presence and clear interpretative intentions. He played the role of the stagehand in Our Town by Thornton Wilder, directed by João Bethencourt. By 1955, he had already taken on a major leading role, portraying Uncle Vanya in Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov. In the 1959 play Señora Carrar's Rifles by Bertolt Brecht, staged by Renato José Pécora, Castro won the best actor award at the Brazilian Association of Theater Critics Awards.
He made his film debut in Carla Civelli's 1959 film É Um Caso de Polícia. In the 1960s, he was invited to be the first director of the Teatro de Comédia do Paraná (TCP), based in Curitiba, when he invited actor couple Paulo Goulart and Nicette Bruno to be part of TCP's first team.
In 1968, called by Zé Celso, he went to São Paulo to play the title role in Bertolt Brecht's Galileo Galilei, produced by Teatro Oficina, where he played the Fiorentine scientist. In the same year, he made his television debut in the soap opera A Muralha, where he played Dom Manuel Nunes Viana in TV Excelsior.
After working on three soap operas at the station, he moved to TV Tupi in 1970 to join the cast of O Meu Pé de Laranja Lima to play Portuga. He spent seven years at the broadcaster, where he worked on 11 productions, including soap operas such as Mulheres de Areia and Os Inocentes.
In 1978, she moved to Rio de Janeiro's TV Globo to work on the soap opera Dancing Days. He remained with the station for twenty and six years, until 2004. Over the decades he worked on various productions for the broadcaster, including soap operas such as A Gata Comeu, Sinhá Moça, Vale Tudo, Tieta, História de Amor and Chocolate com Pimenta. He also acted in other productions for the broadcaster, such as the comedy Zorra Total and the miniseries A Casa das Sete Mulheres and Engraçadinha: Seus Amores e Seus Pecados.
In addition to television, he has acted in 18 films and 65 plays.
Personal life
He had three children: Guilherme, from his first marriage, Gabriel and João Pedro, from his second.
Cláudio suffered from diabetes and hypertension. After her first separation, she got into a lot of financial trouble and even moved to the Retiro dos Artistas, a philanthropic institution in Rio de Janeiro that takes care of artists, athletes and intellectuals with financial problems.
He died of multiple organ failure, due to complications from a heart bypass surgery performed in April 2005 at the São Lucas Hospital in Copacabana.
