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Francisco Rabal (March 8 1926 - August 29 2001), perhaps better known as Paco Rabal, was a Spanish actor born in Águilas, a small town in the province of Murcia, Spain.

In 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out. Rabal and his family left Murcia and moved to Madrid. Young Francisco had to work as a street salesboy and in a chocolate factory. When he was 13 years old, he left school to work as an electrician at Estudios Chamartín.

Rabal got some sporadic jobs as an extra. Dámaso Alonso and other people advised him to try his luck with a career in theater.

During the following years, he got some roles in theater companies such as Lope de Vega or María Guerrero. It was there that he met Asunción Balaguer; they married and remained together for life. Their daughter, Teresa Rabal, is also an actor.

In 1947, Rabal got some regular jobs in theater. He used his full name, Francisco Rabal, as stage name. However, the people who knew him always called him Paco Rabal. (Paco is the familiar form for Francisco.) "Paco Rabal" became his unofficial stage name.

During the late 1940s, Rabal began acting in movies as an extra, but it was not until 1950 that he got some speaking roles in cinema. He only needed a few years to fully consolidate his career in this new medium, mainly thanks to Luis Buñuel and to his ease in roles as a beau or as a rogue.

William Friedkin thought of Rabal for the French villain of his 1971 movie The French Connection. However, he could not remember the name of "that Spanish actor". Mistakenly, his staff hired another Spanish actor, Fernando Rey. Friedkin discovered that Rabal did not speak English or French, so he decided to keep Rey.

It is widely considered that Rabal's best performances came after Francisco Franco's death on 1975. In the 1980s, Rabal starred in Los Santos Inocentes, in El Disputado Voto del Señor Cayo and also in the TV series Juncal. In the 1990s he played the character of Francisco Goya in Goya en Burdeos.

Francisco Rabal is the only Spanish actor to have received a honoris causa doctoral degree from the University of Murcia.

Rabal died in 2001 from compensatory dilating emphysema, while on a airplane travelling to Bordeaux.

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