Abel Rodríguez Ramírez

Cuban film, radio and television actor. Known for his performance in the film Roble de olor ―in which he worked alongside Jorge Perugorría―, which earned him an award for best supporting actor at the Havana Film Festival in 2003. Also for his leading role in the soap opera Salir de noche, which was a huge boom on the Island, he won recognition from the Cuban public. He was recognized for working and standing out in different series of Colombian television.

Acting was not a coincidence in his life, but rather an inheritance. He began his acting training at the National School of Art Instructors (ENIA), although he did not graduate, he completed three years and in the fourth he withdrew to join a theater company.

In 1996 he leaves his country to work as an entertainer at the Palacio de la Salsa, in Cancún (Mexico). His shyness and his "fear of social life," as he himself defined it, were not an obstacle for him to be recognized for a year as the cheerful voice of rumba on Mexican beaches.

Art ran through his veins. From the moment he was born, he breathed cinema, music and drama. His father worked as a producer for the newscast made by the Cuban Institute of Cinema Arts and Industry (Icaic), while his older brother infected him with his passion for writing scripts for the seventh art.

At age 17, Rodríguez already knew he wanted to be an actor. That is why he left his house daily, in the El Vedado neighborhood of Havana, to pursue his acting studies at the National School of Art. His first appearances on stage were with the Rita Montaner theater group, where he worked for two years, and later with the company El Público he spent seven months in Spain to present the work Caligula.

Feature films were his next professional step. His performance in Roble de olor, the film in which he worked alongside Jorge Perugorría (the actor from Strawberry and Chocolate), earned him an award for best supporting actor at the Havana Film Festival in 2003.

Also for his leading role in the soap opera Salir de noche, which was a huge boom on the island, he won recognition from the Cuban public.

He has done more cinema than television. That is why bringing Camilo to life in La viuda de la mafia became quite a challenge. In Cuba he structured his characterizations with the complete script of the work in hand, in Colombia it is different because you never know what will happen with the plot of the soap opera, immediacy predominates day by day on set. "It was a very good learning exercise, Camilo, my character, has a very big human fiber because he is a man who bets more on the truth than on his own profession."

While in cinema he spent three or four months preparing a character, with this role his best tool has been improvisation. Three days after presenting the casting that RCN held for him in Havana, he traveled to Bogotá and without further ado, started filming in August 2004. He had never before set foot on Colombian soil, he adapted, lived two months in a hotel while he found the apartment where he would stay for approximately a year, when the filming of the soap opera would end.

While he lived in Cuba he was married to Cuban actress Edith Massola with whom he had a daughter, Paula Rodríguez Massola.

During his years in Mexico he lived with Cuban actress María Clara Fernández.

"If you ask me for the moon, I'll bring it down for you. [...] The couple demands attention, and in this career it is very difficult to have enough time to be together. That is why, in my free time I please her in whatever way."

After living for a time in Colombia, he married Colombian actress Anna López with whom he had a son named Benjamín Rodríguez-López and with whom he shared his life in the city of Miami.

Death
He died on October 15, 2021 after spending days hospitalized due to a pulmonary thrombus, which caused him a cardiorespiratory arrest.

Filmography
1999: Salir de noche
Caligula
2002: Rosa la china, as Marco
2004: La viuda de la mafia (soap opera), as Camilio Pulido
2004: Pasaje de ida (short film)
2004: Roble de olor, as José Álvarez
2005: Bailando chachachá
2005: Corazón delator (short film)
2005: Viva Cuba
2006: Por amor (soap opera), as José Ángel Rivero del Castillo
2008: Tiempo final (soap opera) as Castro
2009: Verano en Venecia (soap opera) as Miguel Tirado
2010: El clon (soap opera) Enrique (Ricky)
2011: Chepe Fortuna, as Chepe's father
2015: Celia.
2016: Sinú, río de pasiones
2017: Leyendas del Exilio