--- name: "David Villalpando" canonical: "https://film.one/person/david-villalpando" fi1m_id: "david-villalpando" imdb_id: "nm0897813" tmdb_id: 146797 wikidata_id: "Q1176985" roles: ["Actor"] born: "2 January 1959" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 average_as: "actor" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-09-26T01:05:03.613094+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." --- # David Villalpando ## Identity David Villalpando - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/david-villalpando - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** david-villalpando - **IMDb ID:** nm0897813 - **TMDB ID:** 146797 - **Wikidata ID:** Q1176985 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Villalpando, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1176985, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0897813/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/146797 Actor. Born 2 January 1959 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 2 January 1959, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Villalpando, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1176985, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0897813/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/146797 ## Fi1m on David Villalpando > Villalpando's Enrique in *El Norte* is a boy who believes what he has been told about the North, played with no stage technique showing. One film, but enough to remember him by; the rest of his career happened on Mexican television, out of our sight. Watch Enrique Xuncax talk. In *El Norte* (1983) his sister Rosa, played by Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez, has a watching face that gives little away, and David Villalpando's Enrique is the opposite: quicker, prouder, a boy who believes what he has been told about the North and says so. He had come to Gregory Nava's film from the stage, where he had played more than 1,500 performances of *El Extensionista*, and stage habits are usually the first thing a camera catches. It catches none here. He told an interviewer at the time that he had always had an audience reacting to him and that on the film he "had to learn how to make loving statements to the camera". Whatever that meant to him, it worked. We should own what the film did to us. The Guatemalan opening is as good as anything made about migration, and the crossing left us shaking, and a good part of the reason is that Villalpando had spent the first hour making us believe Enrique's confidence. The film needs someone who has swallowed the promise whole so that it has something to take away from him, and he gives it that without once signalling that he knows what is coming. Our review found Nava earnest, sometimes clumsy, too willing to let the score do the telling. Villalpando is none of those things. Then, as far as cinema is concerned, almost nothing. There are supporting parts in *The Arrival* (1996), John Sayles's *Men with Guns* (1997), Álex de la Iglesia's *Perdita Durango* (1997) and *The Mask of Zorro* (1998), where the credits list him as Skinny and, in the last, as Stupid Soldier. We have not reviewed them and will not pretend to judge them. The career he actually built was in Mexican television, as an actor, writer and director of comedy, most recognisably as Profesor Virolo, the inept school director of *Cero en conducta* (1999), much of it alongside Jorge Ortiz de Pinedo, and later directing episodes of *Una familia de diez*. The actor who learned to be small for the camera went back to being large for a studio audience, and made a living at it for decades. British viewers will mostly know him for one film, and we cannot vouch for the rest. But he has kept working with Gutiérrez since *El Norte*, and if either of them is ever handed a part of that size again we would like to be told. Until then, watch the one. Watch him in the first hour, before the crossing, while Enrique still thinks he knows how the story ends. ## Biography David Villalpando is a Mexican actor born on 2 January 1959 in Mexico City. His breakthrough role was as Enrique in the 1983 film *El Norte*. He has appeared in films including *The Arrival* (1996), *Dance with the Devil* (1997) and *The Mask of Zorro* (1998). Villalpando began his career in theatre and has also worked in Mexican television series. *Sources: imdb.com, en.wikipedia.org, es.wikipedia.org.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *El Norte* (1983), Fi1m 72, as Enrique — [page](https://film.one/film/el-norte.md) ## Complete filmography (19) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Dr. Cándido Pérez* (2021), series, Director - *Los mexicanos calientes* (2018), as Profesor Virolo (segment: Escuela de platanito) - *El sexo me da risa 5* (2017), as El profesor Virolo (segment: La escuelita 2) - *El sexo me divierte 2* (2016), as El professor Virolo (Sketch: La escuelita de Platanito) - *Cero en conducta* (1999), series, as Dir. Rigoberto Patiño Pantoja - *The Mask of Zorro* (1998), as Stupid Soldier - *Men with Guns* (1998), as Gum Person - *If I Never See You Again* (1997), as Agente en Cruz Roja - *Dance with the Devil* (1997), as Skinny - *The Arrival* (1996), as Cabbie - *The Daughter of the Puma* (1994), as Guerrillero - *Nurses on the Line: The Crash of Flight 7* (1993), as Luis - *The Harvest* (1993), as Cabbie - *Acapulco H.E.A.T.* (1993), series, as Manuel - *Goitia: A God for Himself* (1989), as Bernardino - *No se asombre sargento* (1988), as Julián - *The Delos Adventure* (1986), as Alfonso - *El Norte* (1983), as Enrique — Fi1m 72, [page](https://film.one/film/el-norte.md) - *American Playhouse* (1982), series, as Enrique --- © 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/david-villalpando