Spanish actor Eusebio Poncela has died at the age of 79. Poncela is best known for his starring role alongside Antonio Banderas and Carmen Maura in the 1987 film The Law of Desire.
The Law of Desire was the sixth feature film from director Pedro Almodóvar, but the first one he made independently with his own production company.
The story focuses on a complex love triangle between three men. Poncela played a film director disappointed in with his relationship with his younger boyfriend, while Banderas played a young man who possessively falls in love with the director.
The film was the second time Poncela worked with Almodóvar, having appeared in his previous film Matador.
Poncela began working in film in the 1970’s and played a gay character in Eloy de la Iglesia’s 1972 horror film The Cannibal Man. He also appeared in the cult film Rapture in 1979.
A regular face in Spanish films, in the 1990’s the actor moved to Argentina and continued his career with regular screen appearances in films including A Shadow You Soon Will Be (1994) and Martin (Hache) (1997). The actor later spoke about how moving to Argentina helped him kick on a long standing addiction to heroin.
In the early 2000’s he returned to living in Spain and appeared in Black Serenade (2001), Intact (2001) and 800 Bullets (2002).
In recent years the actor appeared in many television projects and in 2022 took to the stage in a production of the play Kiss of the Spiderwoman.
Hero image: Eusebio Poncela photographed by Digob (Wikipedia) published under a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 license. (Cropped).
