--- name: "Cantinflas" canonical: "https://film.one/person/cantinflas" roles: ["Actor"] born: "12 August 1911" died: "20 April 1993" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 average_as: "actor" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-09-20T03:06:35.032221+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Cantinflas Actor. Born 12 August 1911 in Santa María La Redonda, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico. Died 20 April 1993. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 12 August 1911, Santa María La Redonda, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico - **Died:** 20 April 1993 - **Also known as:** Mario Moreno, Fortino Mario Alfonso Moreno Reyes, Mario Moreno "Cantinflas", Mario Moreno Reyes, کانفلاور - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantinflas, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q195371, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0134594/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/29518 ## Streaming the US now - **Tubi:** [*Around the World in 80 Days*](https://film.one/film/around-the-world-in-80-days.md) (63) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Cantinflas > A man in trousers held up with a rope talks his way round every policeman, landlord and magistrate in Mexico City without once finishing a sentence. English-speaking audiences got the trousers and missed the talk, which was most of the joke. He stands in trousers that stop well short of his waist, held up with a length of rope, under a coat with the elbows gone and a hat that has been sat on. A policeman or a landlord asks him a plain question. He answers at once, at length and with complete confidence, and the answer loops back on itself, changes subject twice and never lands, until the man in the uniform is nodding as if he had followed it. The style has its own verb, cantinflear. The audience knows what he means and authority does not, and that is the whole joke and most of the politics. He learned the body first. In the 1930s Mario Moreno worked the carpas, the travelling tent shows, as a dancer, acrobat and comic, and took the stage name so his family would not find out. Small film parts followed from the middle of the decade, then *Ahí está el detalle* (1940), which fixed the character and made him a star across Latin America, and *Ni sangre, ni arena* (1941), a satire on bullfighting, both from Santiago Reachi's Posa Films. Miguel M. Delgado directed him from the 1940s onward, picture after picture, and for two decades Spanish-language comedy was largely his. Hollywood met him in his forties. In *Around the World in 80 Days* (1956) he is Passepartout to David Niven's Fogg, and where Niven does almost nothing he does everything, all elbows and eyebrows. We laughed hardest at the bullring in Spain, and it is worth saying why: with a crowd in front of him and room to work, he needed no translation, and it is the one long stretch where the film lets him take all of it. It is also his own bullfighting satire of fifteen years earlier, replayed for people who had never seen the original. *Pepe* (1960) followed, and the talk that made him did not survive the crossing into English. The film failed and he went home. What came after was long and, seen from here, uneven. *El analfabeto* (1961), with him as Inocencio Prieto y Calvo, is among the best liked of the later comedies; *El patrullero 777* (1978) put him back in a police uniform as Diógenes Bravo and brought him a late success. After *Su excelencia* (1967) the Delgado films were made for less and made to a pattern, and he kept making them into the early 1980s. He had told an interviewer in 1948 that "Cantinflas represents the humble Mexican who wants to overcome himself and accomplish something in life." He said it once and then repeated it, with a different hat, for thirty years. The Hollywood picture is how most English speakers meet him, and it is a supporting part in somebody else's film. Start instead with *Ahí está el detalle*, with subtitles, and accept early that the subtitles will lose the race. That is not the translator's fault. The man was built so that nobody writing things down could keep up with him. ## Biography Cantinflas, born Mario Fortino Alfonso Moreno Reyes on 12 August 1911 in Santa María la Redonda, Mexico City, was a Mexican comedian and film actor. He began his career in travelling tent shows as a dancer and comic before appearing in his first feature film in 1941. He appeared in dozens of Mexican films, often portraying the pelado character, including *El Siete Machos* (1951), *El analfabeto* (1961), *El señor doctor* (1965) and *El profe* (1971). In 1956 he played Passepartout opposite David Niven in the Hollywood film *Around the World in 80 Days*. Cantinflas died of lung cancer on 20 April 1993 in Mexico City. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, britannica.com, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *Around the World in 80 Days* (1956), Fi1m 63, as Passepartout — [page](https://film.one/film/around-the-world-in-80-days.md) ## Complete filmography (52) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Amigo and Friends* (1982), series, as cantinflas · Creator - *El Barrendero* (1982), as Napoleon · Story - *México de mis amores* (1979), Actor - *El patrullero 777* (1978), as Diógenes Bravo · Story - *The Minister and Me* (1976), as Mateo Melgarejo 'Mateíto' · Story - *Conserje en condominio* (1974), as Ursulo · Idea - *Don Quixote Rides Again* (1973), as Sancho Panza - *Cantinflas Show* (1972), series, as Cantinflas · Creator - *El profe* (1971), as Sócrates García · Story - *A Quixote Without La Mancha* (1969), as Justo Leal · Screenplay - *Por mis pistolas* (1968), as Fidencio Barrenillo · Writer - *Your Excellency* (1967), as Lopez 'Lopitos' / His Excellency the Ambassador of Los Cocos · Story - *El señor doctor* (1965), as Salvador Medina / Chava - *The Little Priest* (1964), as Padre Sebastián - *Entrega Inmediata* (1963), as Feliciano - *The Extra* (1962), as Rogaciano - *El analfabeto* (1961), as Inocencio Prieto y Calvo - *Pepe* (1960), as Pepe - *Love Your Neighbor* (1958), as Luis - *El bolero de Raquel* (1957), as Bolero - *Around the World in 80 Days* (1956), as Passepartout — Fi1m 63, [page](https://film.one/film/around-the-world-in-80-days.md) - *Up and Down* (1956), as Cantinflas - *Drop the Curtain* (1955), as Cantinflas - *Tailored gentleman* (1954), as Cantinflas - *Mr. Photographer* (1953), as Cantinflas - *The Atomic Fireman* (1952), as Agente 777 · Story - *Si yo fuera diputado* (1952), as Cantinflas · Story - *El Siete Machos* (1951), as Margarito / El Siete Machos - *El Portero* (1950), as Cantinflas - *The Magician* (1949), as Cantinflas - *El Supersabio* (1948), as Cantinflas - *Fly Away, Young Man!* (1947), as Cantinflas - *Soy un prófugo* (1946), as Cantinflas - *One Day with the Devil* (1945), as Juan Pérez - *Gran Hotel* (1944), as Cantinflas - *Romeo y Julieta* (1943), as Romeo - *The Circus* (1943), as El Zapatero - *The Three Musketeers* (1942), as Cantinflas / D'Artagnan (as Mario Moreno 'Cantinflas') - *Carnaval en el trópico* (1942), as Cantinflas - *The Unknown Policeman* (1941), as Agente 777 - *Neither Blood Nor Sand* (1941), as Cantinflas - *You’re Missing the Point* (1940), as Cantinflas - *Cantinflas y su prima* (1940), Actor - *Cantinflas Ruletero* (1940), Actor - *Cantinflas boxeador* (1940), Actor - *The Sign of Death* (1939), as Cantinflas - *Jengibre contra Dinamita* (1939), Actor - *Siempre listo en las tinieblas* (1939), Actor - *Festival de Cantinflas* (1939), Actor - *Águila o sol* (1938), as Polito Sol - *Así es mi tierra* (1937), as Tejón - *No te engañes corazón* (1937), as Canti ## Gallery - ![Cantinflas](https://film.one/media/person/1238634/gallery-dd2c86d36899.webp) Cantinflas — Press photo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Cantinflas_en_1967_%28cropped%29.webp?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Mario Moreno Cantinflas, escultura de Onelio Escalona Vargas del Dúo Caricare. (2011)](https://film.one/media/person/1238634/gallery-fbcc41d4e546.jpg) Mario Moreno Cantinflas, escultura de Onelio Escalona Vargas del Dúo Caricare. (2011) — Kmt2010, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Mario_Moreno_%28Cantinflas%29_por_Onelio_Escalona.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Cantinflas](https://film.one/media/person/1238634/gallery-59919c3abd40.jpg) Cantinflas — Image via TMDB --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/cantinflas