Rafael Lahera

Outstanding Cuban actor with an extensive artistic career in Film, Theater, and Television.

What he always remembers from the beginning are his early days as an extra. He was very young and crazy, which is why he did double roles. For example, in El corsario negro he was the double for Carlos Gilí. He knew how he walked, didn't miss a step, and of course he studied him while he studied the scripts, and when Gilí finished, he would put on his clothes. "For me it was the greatest thing, I was the corsair."

Television studios were his first school. Just to say a few lines cost God and much help. Sometimes an actor wasn't available and they would give short texts to the extras. If you said them wrong, forget about opening your mouth on television. Actors like Jorge Villazón would propose you and with much dedication would review the texts with you. They gave you confidence, and that's rare. It was very difficult to play a character on television and he moved to theater. There he had his first leading role, in Don Juan Tenorio, with Tony Díaz. After being awarded for a monologue that he loves dearly, Lazarito, by Yulky Cary, he returned to television and still, as he already said, I keep starting over.

By not going through school, I've had to make it up as I go. He remembers that a group of extras convinced the union, which at that time was led by Alejandro Lugo, to offer an acting course for extras. They succeeded and it was great. Later he became involved in the Amateur Movement, and there wasn't a workshop he would miss, without stopping his own studies, something the actor never stops doing. To that you have to add his time in two theater groups that were true academies. The first, Anaquillé, in which actors learned to work with puppet gloves, rod puppets, marionettes, folk theater, children's theater, street theater, salon comedy, classical and experimental theater under the direction of Yulki Cary. The other group was Teatro Caribeño, by Eugenio Hernández Espinosa, which managed to bring together a lot of talent from different backgrounds and fused them, achieving a feedback of experiences.

Great figures came from there like Bárbaro Marín, Pichi Perugorría, Polito Ibáñez, Mario Guerra, and people passed through from Pancho Céspedes to actors like Charles Arencibia or directors like Pedro Ángel Vera, Tony Díaz, José Milián and so many that it was a luxury of learning for anyone to receive a simple class in percussion or dance at the Verdún. All that, plus the privilege of working with many directors of different aesthetic visions, helped him to achieve today's results.

He has performed Cuban classics like Yarini by Carlos Felipe and Andoba by Abraham Rodríguez; but he has also matched wits with tutelary playwrights of the universal stage like Pirandello or Chekhov. He faced cinema under the demanding hand of Humberto Solás in a character in Barrio Cuba that earned him the award for best male acting at the Santo Domingo International Film Festival.

Thus, at the 27th edition of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, when Barrio Cuba premiered, the last feature film by maestro Humberto Solás, the actor Felito Lahera, more mature, in the fullness of his expressive registers, with a good dose of synthesis in his gestures, by taking on the story of Santos, the man in love who loses his wife and repudiates the son who is born, wounded from the very conflict that is totally universal, elevates himself as never before, and turns out within the choral plot of the film, in which several stories develop, the moment of greatest intensity and emotion of the film, as demonstrated by each screening and the applause from the audience following those sequences, and even when the audience paid tribute to the actor and the film with a final ovation in the popular Havana cinema Payret.

Felito Lahera takes on challenges and comes through successfully despite not having formal academic training. It's out of personal interest. By not coming from any academy, it was very difficult for him to work on television, so he went to theater: the Caribeño de Arte Popular by Eugenio Hernández, the one by Yulky Cary, he was founder of other groups and was in the Theater Group El Público with Carlos Díaz who trusted him; he later returned to the small screen with that arsenal of resources.

Television serials, episodes of police programs like Día y noche, always in roles of villains and marginal characters that he usually characterizes very well and have led him to receive awards, adventures, telenovelas have been the most usual space for Cuban actor Rafael (Felito) Lahera

"When they gave me the character of Yasel in the Cara Oculta de la Luna I saw the heavens open. The year before I had won an award at the National TV Festival Caricato with a negative character, the rapist I did with Isabel Santos. So, this was diametrically opposite and I like that challenge business, I wanted to throw it. I can't talk to you about a specific person, I turned to friends, coworkers, people I saw and who gave me a lot during the filming. The Cuban public is very defensive of what they think and how that gets to television and they share not wrong criteria with you. I thought it was going to be worse, even aggressive; but when we made the novel we tried to respect the audience very much and they have understood it. They joke – some in bad taste – they say things to you, but there's no aggression. I feel admiration."

"Barrio Cuba I conceived it with the greatest responsibility and professionalism that working under the baton of the great Humberto Solás demanded and the company of actors like Jorge Perugorría, Isabel Santos, Mario Limonta, Aurora Basnuevo, Luisa María Jiménez, Enrique Molina, Manuel Porto, Coralita Veloz, Broselianda Hernández, Bárbaro Marín... With those names you can't sleep peacefully if you have a call the next day and if you add to that the demands of a director like Humberto Solás and that it's your first big work in cinema... you have no choice but to stop being Felito Lahera for a good while to become that Santos of Barrio Cuba. I did it with all the love, respect and dedication I could, I couldn't afford the luxury of error before so many colleagues, my family, the people who care about me... it was a lot of responsibility and effort."

"Fame, no, I wasn't expecting it. With you, with the critics, I've been very lucky just like with the public. I had done cinema to a lesser extent, extras, doubles, everything, and to reach my 40s and get such an important leading role in Barrio Cuba with a constellation of Cuban cinema stars is a gift. After that amalgam of characters whose skin you've lent, people – with that habit they have of mixing fiction with the real life of actors – don't have a clear picture of who Felito Lahera is. Felito Lahera is a very absent-minded guy, very good person, very crazy. When I'm working on a project nothing distracts me. I'm very responsible, I work a lot, I want to do everything simultaneously and sometimes I can't finish what I have in hand. I'm very passionate. Yasel has a lot of Felito in him.

He is the father of four children from different marriages, they are independent productions.

From 2012 onwards he works in telenovelas in Colombia.