Ignacio López Tarso

López was born in Mexico City to parents Alfonso López Bermúdez and Ignacia López Herrera. Because of his father's job, he spent his childhood among several cities including Veracruz, Hermosillo, Navojoa and Guadalajara. His siblings are Alfonso and Marta. At around age 8-9, when he was in Guadalajara, his parents took him to see a play, where he became interested in acting.

He lived in Valle de Bravo, Estado de México, where he went to secondary school. Although his family's economic problems kept him from attending high school, he joined seminaries in Temascalcingo, Estado de México and Mexico City to continue his education. During his time there, a visiting priest from the United States organized a group to perform plays, in which he participated. He learned to read oral poetry and books of classical plays, including those by Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca.

When he was 20, he joined the military service at Querétaro, where he was in barracks for about a year. He also served in the Veracruz and Monterrey regiments, and eventually reached First Sergeant grade. After completing his service, he declined an opportunity to attend military school, even though he liked the discipline.

He worked in Mexico City as a sales agent for a clothing company. He aspired to work in the United States, and planned to work at an orange grove in Merced, California. However, a few days in, he fell from a tree and injured his vertebrate. He returned to Mexico City for rehabilitation therapy which lasted about a year.

López Tarso on stage in 2019

While López was in therapy, he read books on poetry and theatre, and became a fan of author Xavier Villaurrutia. After his recovery, he heard that Villaurrutia was teaching theatre at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, so he visited him, initially to ask for his autograph, but then was invited to listen in on his lessons. After a few days, he formally joined the theatre academy at age 24. When Villaurrtia advised Lopez to pick a stage name, he changed from "López López" to "López Tarso", the Tarso was Spanish for Paul the Apostle's hometown of Tarsus, and also one of the cities in Mexico that Lopez had also once lived. Besides Villaurrutia, he studied under other masters such as Salvador Novo, Clementina Otero, Celestino Gorostiza, André Moreau, Seki Sano, Fernando Wagner and Fernando Torre Lapham.

López Tarso's professional stage debut was in 1951 for the play Born Yesterday by Garson Kanin. He would also perform in several William Shakespeare plays such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Othello and King Lear. Other productions included: The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles, Hippolytus by Euripides, La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas, Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand, The Miser by Molière, El villano en su rincón by Lope de Vega, The Mayor of Zalamea by Calderón de la Barca, and Exit the king by Eugène Ionesco. "Equus" by Peter Shaffer. He also performed works from authors Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Miguel de Cervantes, Guillén de Castro, Hugo Argüelles, Emilio Carballido, Ramón María del Valle-Inclán, over a hundred productions throughout his career.

Ignacio López Tarso's theatrical work has been mostly performing in drama, though in the years 2014 and 2015 he starred in a two-person comedy written by Carlos Gorostiza and titled Aeroplanos ("Airplanes"); his performance on stage was presented with Sergio Corona who alternated appearances with Manuel "Loco" Valdés. The play was presented at the Teatro Independencia in Mexico City.

López Tarso's film debut was in 1954 where he played a minor character in La desconocida, which was directed by Chano Urueta.

He played the title character Macario, a supernatural drama directed by Roberto Gavaldón set in the Day of the Dead. The film was entered into the 1960 Cannes Film Festival.[1] and was the first Mexican film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1961.[2] He himself won a Golden Gate Award for Best Actor at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1960, and would win another for his work in the 1963 film The Paper Man, directed by Ismael Rodríguez.

In 1961, López Tarso starred in Rosa Blanca, directed by Gavaldon. Because the film was censured by political interests of the time, it was not released until 1972. He won the Ariel Award for Best Actor in 1973. Other notable movie performances included: Cri Cri, el grillito cantor (1963), directed by Tito Davison; La vida inútil de Pito Pérez (1969), directed by Gavaldón; The prophet Mimi (1972), directed by José Estrada; Rapiña (1973), directed by Carlos Enrique Taboada; and The bricklayers (1976), directed by Jorge Fons.

As part of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, López Tarso has acted in over fifty films, sharing star roles with actors such as Dolores del Río, María Félix, Marga López, Carlos López Moctezuma, Elsa Aguirre, Luis Aguilar, Katy Jurado, Irasema Dilián, Pedro Armendáriz and Emilio el indio Fernández.

Besides film, López Tarso has appeared in over twenty television series, and has released eight albums, many of which he recites poems and corridos about the Mexican Revolution. At one time, he served as a politician and became a federal deputy. He also had jobs in various organizations and trade-unions related to the actor and cinematographic associations.