--- name: "Leonardo Villar" canonical: "https://film.one/person/leonardo-villar" fi1m_id: "leonardo-villar" imdb_id: "nm0897980" tmdb_id: 230263 wikidata_id: "Q459818" roles: ["Actor"] born: "25 July 1923" died: "3 July 2020" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 average_as: "actor" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-09-26T14:32:47.848918+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." --- # Leonardo Villar ## Identity Leonardo Villar - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/leonardo-villar - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** leonardo-villar - **IMDb ID:** nm0897980 - **TMDB ID:** 230263 - **Wikidata ID:** Q459818 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Villar, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q459818, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0897980/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/230263 Actor. Born 25 July 1923 in Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil. Died 3 July 2020. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 25 July 1923, Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil - **Died:** 3 July 2020 - **Also known as:** Leonardo Motta, Леонардо Вильяр, レオナルド・ヴィラール, 莱昂纳多·维拉尔, 레오나르도 빌라르, लियोनार्डो विलर - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Villar, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q459818, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0897980/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/230263 ## Fi1m on Leonardo Villar > Leonardo Villar played steadfast men, most of them poor and devout, and made their conviction look like something they had no say in. Outside Brazil his screen career rests on one 1962 lead, and it can bear the weight. Zé do Burro explains his promise to a priest, then to a reporter, then to a crowd, and he uses the same flat words each time. He barely raises his voice. In *The Given Word* (1962) Leonardo Villar plays a farmer who does not know he is being stubborn, because to him there is nothing to decide: he said he would carry the cross to the church, so he is carrying it. Most actors handed a saint or a simpleton let us see the effort of holding the pose. Villar does not, and that is the whole trick. He came to the cinema at 38 and already formed. Trained at the Escola de Arte Dramática in São Paulo, in its first graduating class of 1948, he spent eight years with the Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia doing Arthur Miller and Nelson Rodrigues, and his Eddie Carbone in *A View from the Bridge* (1958) was the part that made his name on stage. *The Given Word* was his first film. Two more leads followed quickly, both title roles in dramas of the Brazilian interior: *Lampião, o Rei do Cangaço* (1964) and *A Hora e a Vez de Augusto Matraga* (1965). Then, from 1965, television, and more than thirty telenovelas over the next four and a half decades, often as fathers, priests and men in charge. He went back to the theatre in 2001. What critics kept noticing, on stage and on screen, was a truthfulness with no sentiment in it, and we saw the same thing. Anselmo Duarte's staging in *The Given Word* is plain and its villains are drawn thick, and it is Villar's patience that keeps the film upright while the square fills around him. When he finally sits down on the church step and lays the cross across his knees, we were moved more than we expected to be by a man sitting down. It works because he has spent an hour refusing to ask for our sympathy; the face has been held so still that one small sag in the shoulders reads as a collapse. Dionísio Azevedo, opposite him, plays the priest as frightened rather than wicked, and the two men give the film its one real argument. The complaints about that film, when they came, were about the production and its place in the Brazilian cinema of the time, not about him. The honest caveat is ours: we have reviewed one of his films, and the bulk of his later work is television made for a Brazilian audience that we have not seen, including a much-noted turn as a religious fanatic, Ezequiel Ribeiro, in *Barriga de Aluguel* (1990). He described himself as "calmo, tranquilo, tímido, muito fechado", a calm, shy, closed man who said on stage what he could not say in life, and the account squares with the actor on the steps. For most viewers outside Brazil, then, the career is in practice a single film, and the recommendation is simple. Watch *The Given Word* for the man with the cross, and notice how little he does. ## Biography Leonardo Villar (born Leonildo Motta) was a Brazilian actor. He was born on 25 July 1923 in Piracicaba, São Paulo, and died on 3 July 2020 in São Paulo. He began his career in the theatre in the 1950s and trained at the Escola de Arte Dramática of the University of São Paulo. Villar first played the role of Zé do Burro in the 1960 stage production of Dias Gomes's play *O Pagador de Promessas*. He reprised the part in Anselmo Duarte's 1962 film adaptation *The Given Word*, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and became the first Brazilian film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Villar appeared in numerous films, including *Lampião, King of the Badlands* (1964) and *The Hour and Turn of Augusto Matraga* (1965), and worked extensively in Brazilian television, notably for Rede Globo. *Sources: imdb.com, en.wikipedia.org, pt.wikipedia.org, g1.globo.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *The Given Word* (1962), Fi1m 76, as Zé do Burro — [page](https://film.one/film/the-given-word.md) ## Complete filmography (48) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Passione* (2010), series, as Antero Gouveia / Giovanni Melatto - *The Ballroom* (2007), as Álvaro - *Pé na Jaca* (2006), series, as José Fortuna (Tio Zé) - *Student's Heart* (2002), series, as Ronaldo Rosa - *Leonardo Villar - Um Homem Só* (2001), Actor - *Brave New Land* (2000), as Comandante - *Family Ties* (2000), series, as Pascoal Gomes - *Friendly Fire* (1998), as Correia - *Serras Azuis* (1998), series, as Ignácio Paiva - *Os Ossos do Barão* (1997), series, as Antenor Camargo Parente de Rendon Pompeo e Taques - *Enigma de um Dia* (1996), Actor - *Большая засада* (1995), series, as Coronel Elias Daltro - *Amazônia* (1991), series, as Coronel Peçanha - *Barriga de Aluguel* (1990), series, as Ezequiel Ribeiro - *Desejo* (1990), series, as Dr. Rodrigues - *Mania de Querer* (1986), series, as Professor João Pereira - *Tudo em Cima* (1985), series, as Dr. Robert Krauss - *Santa Marta Fabril* (1984), series, as Fernando - *Marquesa de Santos* (1984), series, as José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva - *Marquesa de Santos* (1984), as José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva - *Voltei pra Você* (1983), series, as Delegado Rubens - *Amor de Perversão* (1982), Actor - *O Homem Proibido* (1982), series, as Darío Pereira Rodrigues - *Telerromance* (1981), series, as Nestor Benício - *Obrigado, Doutor* (1981), series, Actor - *Chick Fowle, Faixa Preta de Cinema* (1981), Actor - *Coração Alado* (1980), series, as Dr. França (Marcelo França) - *Plantão de Polícia* (1979), series, Actor - *Estúpido Cupido* (1976), series, as Guima (Alcides Guimarães Filho) - *O Grito* (1975), series, as Edgard - *Escalada* (1975), series, as Alberto Silveira - *Uma Rosa com Amor* (1972), series, as Frazão - *O Primeiro Amor* (1972), series, as Luciano (2ª versão) - *Caso Especial* (1971), series, as inspetor - *Os Acorrentados* (1969), series, as Rodrigo - *A Madona de Cedro* (1968), as Delfino Montiel - *Dangerous Game* (1967), as Homero Olmos - *H.O.* (1967), as Homero Olmos / Homero de Tal - *Os Miseráveis* (1967), series, as Jean Valjean - *Amor e Desamor* (1966), as Alberto - *O Santo Milagroso* (1966), as Pastor Raimundo - *The Big City* (1966), as Jasão - *A Cor da Sua Pele* (1965), series, as Dudu - *The Hour and Turn of Augusto Matraga* (1965), as Augusto Matraga - *Samba* (1965), Actor - *Procura-se Uma Rosa* (1964), Actor - *Lampião, King of the Badlands* (1963), as Lampião - *The Given Word* (1962), as Zé do Burro — Fi1m 76, [page](https://film.one/film/the-given-word.md) ## Gallery - ![Leonardo Villar](https://film.one/media/person/3908443/gallery-6e676b9f7e18.jpg) Leonardo Villar — UnknownUnknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Leonardo_Villar_%28cropped%29.tif/lossy-page1-250px-Leonardo_Villar_%28cropped%29.tif.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Leonardo Villar](https://film.one/media/person/3908443/gallery-2f761d955c6c.jpg) Leonardo Villar — Image via TMDB - ![Leonardo Villar](https://film.one/media/person/3908443/gallery-35e6423b1f58.jpg) Leonardo Villar — Image via TMDB - ![Leonardo Villar](https://film.one/media/person/3908443/gallery-1d50e9a8e761.jpg) Leonardo Villar — Image via TMDB - ![Leonardo Villar](https://film.one/media/person/3908443/gallery-42a34d1324be.jpg) Leonardo Villar — Image via TMDB ## Awards ### Other awards — 1 won - Order of Cultural Merit (Brazil) 2008: Order of Cultural Merit (Brazil) (won) *From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.* --- © 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/leonardo-villar