Trivia

Father of actor Juan Ignacio Aranda.

He performed works from authors Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Miguel de Cervantes, Guillén de Castro, Hugo Argüelles, Emilio Carballido, Ramón María del Valle-Inclán, over a hundred productions throughout his career.

Between 1988 and 1991 he served as a federal deputy, representing Mexico City's eighth district for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

In 1961, López Tarso starred in Rosa Blanca, directed by Gavaldón. Because the film was censured by political interests of the time, it was not released until 1972.

When he was 20, he joined the military service at Querétaro, where he was in barracks for about a year. He also served in the Veracruz and Monterrey regiments, and eventually reached First Sergeant grade.

He was honored multiple times at the TVyNovelas Awards.

At the time of his death, along with Armando Silvestre, he was the oldest living actor and one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Mexican cinema.

López Tarso worked in Mexico City as a sales agent for a clothing company. He aspired to work in the United States, and planned to work at an orange grove in Merced, California. However, a few days in, he fell from a tree and injured his vertebrae. He returned to Mexico City for rehabilitation therapy which lasted about a year.

Besides Villaurrutia, he studied under other masters such as Salvador Novo, Clementina Otero, Celestino Gorostiza, André Moreau, Seki Sano, Fernando Wagner and Fernando Torre Lapham.

He played the title character Macario, a supernatural drama directed by Roberto Gavaldón set on the Day of the Dead. The film was entered into the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. and was the first Mexican film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1961.

While López was in physical rehabilitation therapy, he read books on poetry and theatre, and became a fan of author Xavier Villaurrutia. After his recovery, he heard that Villaurrutia was teaching theatre at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, so he visited him, initially to ask for his autograph, but then was invited to listen in on his lessons. After a few days, he formally joined the theatre academy at age 24.

López Tarso won a Golden Gate Award for Best Actor at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1960, and another for his work in the 1963 film El hombre de papel (released in English as The Paper Man), directed by Ismael Rodríguez.

Besides film, López Tarso appeared in over twenty television series, and released eight albums, in many of which he recited poems and corridos about the Mexican Revolution.

López Tarso's film debut was in 1954, when he played a minor character in La desconocida, which was directed by Chano Urueta.

As part of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, López Tarso acted in over fifty films, sharing starring roles with actors such as Dolores del Río, María Félix, Marga López, Carlos López Moctezuma, Elsa Aguirre, Luis Aguilar, Katy Jurado, Irasema Dilián, Pedro Armendáriz and Emilio el indio Fernández.

In 1973 he was given the Ariel Award for Best Actor for Rosa Blanca, and the Ariel de Oro lifetime achievement award in 2007.

Ignacio López Tarso was a Mexican actor of stage, film and television.

Ignacio López Tarso's theatrical work has been mostly performing in drama, though in the years 2014 and 2015 he starred in a two-person comedy written by Carlos Gorostiza and titled Aeroplanos ("Airplanes").

Although his family's economic problems kept him from attending high school, he joined seminaries in Temascalcingo, Estado de México, and Mexico City to continue his education.

López Tarso's professional stage debut was in 1951 for the play Born Yesterday by Garson Kanin. He would also perform in several William Shakespeare plays such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Othello and King Lear.