“An original woman is not someone that doesn’t imitate someone, but the one that nobody can imitate”, she once said.
MARIA FELIX PROFESSIONAL
The Mexican historical soap La Constitución (1971) was María Félix’s last professional acting job. She famously passed on starring opposite Humphrey Bogart in The Barefoot Contessa (Ava Gardner ended up with the part) and The Legend of Lylah Clare (Kim Novak got the role).
MARIA FELIX SKIN
A passionate relationship followed between María and Jorge and they tied the knot in 1952, her second marriage, but it ended cruelly one year later when Negrete died of hepatitis.įélix appeared in a whopping 47 films in her native Mexico but doggedly kept declining Hollywood roles, recognising that she would be used to suit any kind of role that required a darker skin tone or “exotic” looks.
MARIA FELIX MOVIE
Stubborn, headstrong and patriotic though, María insisted she wanted to make a Mexican movie instead and made her silver screen debut in 1943 in El peñón de las Animas opposite leading heartthrob of the Mexican Golden Age Jorge Negrete, spectacularly snatching the role from under the nose of his then girlfriend. After a chance meeting with filmmaker Fernando Palacios, she was steered in the direction of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in Hollywood. Wherever María Félix went, drama usually followed. She bore her sorrows outwardly very well but I noticed that she was suffering a lot, I remember her being physically discarded in those devices but with high spirits.” María Félix dining with Frida, Diego and friends
“She was intelligent, funny, lépera like herself. “I loved Frida as much as I loved Diego,” Félix later opened up. Despite the numerous letters to her other (and female) lovers, there is no surviving evidence to link Frida and Maria romantically. Frida, in failing health, cunning and heartbroken, tried to get back at her cheating husband with a counter move in which she allegedly also proposed to María by letter, but whatever happened or was planned between the three of them, María Félix took to her grave. In his lovelorn state, Diego had written to María asking her to marry him.
Maria Felix, hated portrait by Diego Portrait 1949 One in charcoal of the diva, ‘ Madre Mexicana’, was successfully auctioned for $325,000 in 2007. Rivera produced other portraits of María. Later, Diego wanted that portrait for an exhibition in Fine Arts, but since I did not lend it to him, he stopped talking to me for more than a year.” She hated the painting and sold it to a Juan Gabriel for 15 million pesos, never allowing the rejected Rivera to exhibit it. “I wanted him to paint me Tehuana, but he said it was very vulgar, so he painted me as he wanted … naked, because he was very much in love with me. “I’ve never liked Rivera’s painting” she said. She later had the painting amended to cover her body. When the finished work was revealed, María was mightily offended and in her inimitable and brutally honest manner she called it ‘ muy malo” (very bad). He wanted her to pose naked, but she was having none of it. Lovestruck Diego insisted on painting María’s portrait. Félix stayed with the couple for days at a time in their blue Coyoacan home, Casa Azul in Mexico City. Instantly there was a close friendship with both the odd and unkempt Diego and the gorgeous but long-suffering Frida. María Félix met Diego Rivera in 1947 while she was filming Río Escondid.
MARIA FELIX FULL
In 1984, she was named one of the best dressed women in the world by the Italian Chamber of Fashion and the French Federation of Couture. Widely considered “the most beautiful face in the history of Mexican cinema”, her beauty was indeed unrivalled – that inimitable raised right eyebrow and beauty mark, the smouldering dark eyes, flowing glossy black locks, pouting full lips and irresistible hourglass figure – no creative eye could resist. The fashion industry also claimed her as their sweetheart. Not just the volcanically hot Latina actress, María was also the painterly muse to the likes of Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Frida Kahlo’s beau, Diego Riviera amongst others. Strong-willed, outspoken, controversial and drop-dead gorgeous, her life story is that of a movie script, an escapee from desperate and humble beginnings, teenage beauty queen, silver screen actress with multiple marriages and even more bisexual love affairs, not to mention one particularly high profile ménage à trois that got her wrapped up in the tangled sheets of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s famously fiery relationship.
The phrase ‘femme fatale’ must have been invented for ‘ La Doña’ – diva of the golden age of Mexican cinema, María Félix.
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