Rubén Rabasa, Cuban actor who continues to succeed in Hollywood and on social media

February 2, 2024

Rubén Rabasa, who will turn 86 in April, recounts that the day he arrived in the United States, in 1955, he had a different kind of welcome in mind. "You wouldn't believe the questions they asked me: 'Are you homosexual? Are you a communist?' I suppose I expected a warm welcome.

He initially settled in New York City, along with his mother, a divorced nurse, and his younger brother. Thanks to help from friends like actor Orestes Matacena and fellow actor and theater director Miguel Ponce, the young man began to make a name for himself within the Latin community of the Big Apple and was one of the first to perform theater in Spanish in the streets of the cosmopolitan city.

He noted that joining The New York Theater of the Americas, under Ponche's tutelage, marked a before and after in his career, as it allowed him to participate in around thirty plays until his first opportunity in cinema came with a feature film called Badge 73.
There, "my bald head made its debut peeking out from the letter 'B' in the title sequence," he wrote on his official website. Some time later he would be among the founders of the well-known Centro Cultural Cubano in that very place.

Later he decided to move to Florida, where he sought to feel embraced by the enormous Cuban community there and new opportunities for his work opened up. Among the films he appeared in during those years are Guaguasi (1983), Amigos (1985), Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach (1988), and he was also in the successful TV series Miami Vice, in which he appeared in two episodes.

From there he built an extensive career, in which he has alternated between cinema and television—many will remember his appearances on the famous program Sábado Gigante—and has shared the screen with stars of the caliber of John Travolta, Colin Firth, Marisa Tomei, Adam Sandler, and Andy García, among others.

His résumé includes more than 70 audiovisual productions, among which stand out The Intruders, Better Things, Luces de Neón, I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson, Criminal Minds, Superperdidos, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Lost City, and Cuando salí de Cuba.

They continue to call him for new roles and one of his latest roles in Hollywood came last year when we saw him in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, a superhero film that grossed more than 470 million dollars worldwide and in which Rabasa played a cafeteria employee who confused Ant-Man with Spiderman.

"I didn't know who Ant-Man was. I thought it was Spiderman because he was wearing a red and blue suit. So I said 'Thanks, Spiderman,' without thinking. And it turns out the director (Peyton Reed) really liked that and left it in the movie," he stated in an interview published on the Marvel website.

In 2022 he premiered a one-man show in theater called Rubenología, which summarized his career and offered a glimpse into the reality of a "sui géneris" life for someone his age in the universe of social media. Before the premiere, in a conversation with the EFE news agency, it became known that Rabasa has a "social media man," a social media manager who handles his accounts on Instagram and TikTok, where he regularly publishes videos of himself dancing and doing crazy things."

On the first of the aforementioned platforms he has accumulated more than 55 thousand followers, while on the second he has more than 22 thousand. His posts receive a large number of interactions and keep him close, especially to the young audience that has a strong presence on those sites.

In an interview he gave to the program Mi hora favorita, he confessed that his secret for maintaining vitality is living in the present. "I use my rule of three: you have to be observing, accepting, and educating yourself. That's all," he declared.

He only returned to Cuba on one occasion: he was there for a month in 1961 and promised he would not return.