Peter Gonzales Falcon, star of Federico Fellini’s ‘Roma’, dies at age 75

Peter Gonzales Falcon, the Texas actor who played the young Federico Fellini Roma, the 1972 autobiographical film by the famous Italian director, has passed away. He was 75.

Gonzales Falcon was found dead Tuesday at his home in La Pryor, Texas, by authorities who had been called there for a security check, his friend Aurelio Montemayor said. The Hollywood reporter.

After dropping out of college after being hired Life Max (1969), a farcical contemporary comedy about the retaking of the Alamo, Gonzales Falcon was hired by Fellini himself for Romawith cameos from Anna Magnani, Marcello Mastroianni and Gore Vidal.

Segments of the film depict Gonzales Falcon as Fellini in the 1930s and 1940s after the future filmmaker arrives in Rome to pursue a career as a journalist and wanders the city to experience what it has to offer. He worked on the documentary-like feature film for 41 weeks, he told author Tom Lisante during an extensive interview from 2018.

Fellini “was great and always nice and kind to me,” he said. “However, I saw him having seizures when someone didn’t give him what he wanted. I’ve never had any problems with him. Then, and even now, I think, ‘What’s the problem, let’s just do the scene.’

“He was very intelligent, a genius. He had his vision and his revelations for every scene, right down to the sets and costumes – every stitch was to his specifications, divinely guided, I think. It was fantastic to see Fellini direct.”

Gonzales Falcon told Lisante that his agent had work in other Italian films in store for him, but a death in the family in Texas forced him to return home, and he didn’t go. Roma when it was shown in Cannes.

Gonzales Falcon grew up in La Pryor and attended Texas State University in 1968 when he accompanied a friend to an open casting call for Life Max. He was spotted by director Jerry Paris and cast as one of the soldiers serving under a Mexican general (Peter Ustinov) who has plans to retake the Alamo.

Gonzales Falcon continued with the film when it shot interior scenes at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios, then moved to London to model for a year after the film was completed. While making Romahe also starred as a man in a mental hospital Ospite (1971), directed by Liliana Cavani.

He made several films in Mexico before trying his hand at Hollywood, where he appeared in an episode of 1974 Police woman and as a man romanticizing Joanne Woodward’s character The end (1978), directed by and starring Burt Reynolds.

Gonzales Falcon also cooperated Heartbreaker (1983), starring Miguel Ferrer, and in the 1986 CBS telefilm Houston: The Legend of Texas, starring Sam Elliott. He then played a police chief in Gregory Nava’s Texas set Border town (2007), starring Jennifer Lopez and Martin Sheen.

More recently, he portrayed a fake Italian chef Tiramisu for two (2016) and appeared in the horror film Dis (2018), was acclaimed at the 2018 Amarcort Film Festival – an annual event dedicated to Fellini – and taught filmmaking.

Survivors include his daughters, Ariana and Talula, and sister Maria.