Roger Cudney

Roger Cudney is an American actor, singer, dubbing director, radio and television announcer.[1]

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Cudney is known for starring in numerous Mexican films and telenovelas where he has portrayed numerous different characters.[2] In 2003, The Wall Street Journal described his career playing 'unpopular gringos':

MEXICO CITY -- Roger Cudney, a smallish, 66-year-old with a receding hairline and a gleaming smile, may be the most notorious gringo in Mexico. Some Mexicans know him as a plunderer of ancient archaeological treasures. Others remember him as the union-busting manager of a sweatshop. Still others recognize Mr. Cudney as a pathologically nasty Texas ranger or a meddling diplomat.

Mr. Cudney has been all of these things and more in a 30-year acting career in Mexican TV and movies. The Ohio-born Mr. Cudney came to Mexico in the 1960s to play the lead in the musical Show Boat but he soon found a different dramatic calling. "Roger Cudney is the epitome of the bad gringo, a blending of all the worst American stereotypes," says David Wilt, who compiled the Biographical Dictionary of Mexican Film Performers.

On the [2001] Mexican soap opera, Amigas y rivales (Friends and Rivals), Mr. Cudney was a racist South Texas rancher who caught a couple of illegal Mexican immigrants trespassing on his property, shortly after the World Trade Center attack. "Git off of my land," the actor snarled, waving a shotgun. Then, in his distinctively accented Spanish, he ad-libbed: "Thousands of Americans have just died in New York. They shouldn't let anyone enter my country anymore."[2]

Cudney has also had parts in mainstream Hollywood films including a co-starring role opposite Charles Bronson in The Evil That Men Do, Total Recall, Rambo: First Blood Part II, the James Bond film Licence to Kill, Julia, Perdita Durango and Original Sin.[1] Most recently he portrayed the part of the United States Ambassador to Mexico in La Dictadura Perfecta.

Cudney is married and has three sons and one daughter.