Eva Todor

**Eva Todor** (Budapest, November 9, 1919 - Rio de Janeiro, December 10, 2017) was a Brazilian-Hungarian television, film and theatre actress.

## Biography

Born as Eva Fodor, daughter of Alexander Fodor and Gizella Rothstein, Hungarian Jews linked to the art scene, Eva began on stage as a child, as a dancer at the Royal Opera in Budapest. Because of the financial difficulties faced by Europe in the aftermath of the First World War, the Fodor family abandoned their homeland and emigrated to Brazil in 1929. The following year, Eva, only eleven years old, resumed her career as a dancer in Rio of January. At 10 she started studying classical dance with Maria Olenewa, in the Municipal Theater. It was then she adopted the artistic surname of "Todor" in place of the original Fodor, whose pronunciation in Brazil means a curse.

At age 12, Eva auditioned for the Teatro Recreio and in 1934 she made her debut as an actress in the show "Quanto vale uma mulher" by Luiz Iglesias. She remains in the company and ends up marrying Iglesias in 1936, becoming the first actress of that company of magazines. Soon her talent for the comic roles reveals herself, which leads her husband to write pieces with characters designed especially for her verve. She was an expert on naive girl roles. In 1940, she founded the company "Eva e seus artistas", which debuted with "Feia" by Paulo de Magalhães, under the direction of Esther Leão.

She became a Brazilian citizen in the 1940s, when Getúlio Vargas (Brazilian president) went to see a play in the Municipal Theater of Rio de Janeiro and was delighted. He went to the dressing room and asked Eva: "Do you want to be naturalized?" and so she was.

In 1942, Eva Todor participated in the play "Deus lhe pague" in the cultural town of Goiânia, the new planned city designed to be the state capital of Goiás. The play took place in the newly opened Teatro Goiânia and was attended by the then president Getúlio Vargas and the governor Pedro Ludovico Teixeira. Eva watched Vargas and Pedro Ludovico deliver the key of the city to the new mayor, Prof. Venerando de Freitas Borges.

Her first dramatic role was George Bernard Shaw's "Candida," one of the greatest hits of the 1946 Rio season, which lasted four months. It followed the following year "Carta" by Somerset Maugham. Through her company, which lasted until the late 1950s, great names of Brazilian theatre scene passed through. In 1958 she became a widow, which left her very ill for a while.

Eva's comic actress style would be abandoned in 1966, with the debut of the drama "Senhora da boca do lixo", by Jorge Andrade, under the direction of Dulcina de Moraes. The comedic genre remained her favorite, but the actress opened the range of her interpretation in plays such as "De olho en Amélia" (Georges Feydeau), which earned her the Molière Award for Best Actress in 1969, "In the Family" by Oduvaldo Vianna Filho, directed by Sérgio Britto, (1970); and "Wednesday at Home, Without Missing" by Mario Brasini (1977).

In the cinema, Eva debuted in "Os dois ladrões" (1960), production of Carlos Manga and one of the last successful films of the genre of the chanchadas. Beside Oscarito, she starred in one of the most celebrated passages of Brazilian cinema, called the "mirror scene". In 1964 she appeared in "Pão, amor e ... totobola", by Henrique Campos. In the same year of 1964, she married theater director Paulo Nolding with whom she was dating a few years ago. She once again became a widow in 1989. The fact that she became a widow twice shocked her so much that she did not remarry. Despite trying at both marriages, the actress didn't have children.

But it would be on television that Eva Todor would become more famous. She did 21 works in telenovelas, miniseries and specials. In the genre, its most outstanding role was the one of Kiki Blanche, in the telenovela "Locomotivas" (1977).

Her final role was in a 2012 telenovela 'Salve Jorge' where she played the role of a socialite called Dália. During her final years she suffered from Parkinson's disease. She died at age 98 on December 10, 2017.

## Filmography

### Movie roles

 2003
 2002
 1964
 1960