Carlos Ancira

Carlos Ancira (1929-1987) was a Mexican actor, playwright, and stage director. He appeared in the 1971 test pilot for Plaza Sésamo as shopkeeper Don Ramón and was retained for the original 1972 season.
A 1946 theater arts graduate of Mexico City's Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Ancira began acting on stage in 1948. He performed in Arthur Miller plays, the 1956 Mexican stage version of Witness for the Prosecution, and Three Sisters. Ancira was most closely associated with the avant garde and theater of the absurd, in plays by Jean-Paul Sartre, August Strindberg, Ionesco, and Samuel Beckett (as Vladimir in Waiting for Godot). He became particularly known for his one-man performance of Nikolai Gogol's short story Diary of a Madman, beginning in 1960 and performed into the 1980s (including in Russia). 
On screen, Ancira was mainly a character actor, beginning in 1950. He had key supporting roles in dramas such as Los salvajes (1957, with Pedro Armendáriz) and La sangre enemiga (1971) and played Caiphas in two 1970s Biblical dramas. However, he more often appeared in lower budget horror films, including two El Santo movies (as the mad doctor in Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monsters and a more benign professor in La venganza de Momia). Other genre credits include La señora Muerte (with John Carradine), Orlak, el infierno de Frankenstein, Black Pit of Dr. M (with Beatriz Aguirre), and multiple vampire films.
On TV, his work was primarily in telenovelas, in parts ranging from Thenardier in a 1973 Les Misérables miniseries (with Edith Gonzalez) to usually sympathetic patriarchs on 1980s series and directing the 1982 series Vivir enamorada. As a playwright, his works include Nezahualcóyotl (1951) and Imágenes (1973, a monologue in which he also starred). 
==External links==
*IMDb
*Tribute site in Spanish
*Enciclopedia de la literatura en México - profile
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Category:International Sesame Street Actors