Antonio Grimau

Antonio Rebolini was born on 10 March 1944 in Remedios de Escalada, in the Lanús district of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. His parents died when he was 13, and an older brother became his legal guardian. As a teenager he combined technical school with jobs in a bazaar, as a labourer on a building site and packing noodles in a pasta factory.

At 16 he saw an advertisement in Clarín from the Teatro Charles Chaplin in Almagro, which was looking for actors for a play by Bertolt Brecht. He went to the audition with a friend, who turned back at the door. Grimau went in, was handed a monologue to learn in half an hour, and stayed with the company for four years. He later recalled that the theatre opened up music, books and culture to him and, in his words, saved his life. He trained further with the actor and director Juan Carlos Gené and joined the Argentine Actors Association in 1970.

Grimau began appearing on television in the late 1960s, in programmes including El bulín, ¡Arriba juventud! and El exterminador. During the 1970s he became a familiar romantic lead in Rolando Rivas, taxista, Con odio y con amor, Siempre te amaré, Dos a quererse, opposite Fernanda Mistral, Tu rebelde ternura, Dulce Anastasia and Renato. Trampa para un soñador, with Cristina Alberó in the early 1980s, was one of his biggest successes, followed by Quiero gritar tu nombre, Amar al salvaje, Cuatro hombres para Eva, Extraños y amantes and Las vendedoras de Lafayette.

His first major film role came in La Mary (1974), directed by Daniel Tinayre and starring Susana Giménez and Carlos Monzón. His films also included Rolando Rivas, taxista, Los orilleros, Proceso a la infamia, Los corruptores, Tres alegres fugitivos, Caballos salvajes, La maestra normal, Secretos compartidos and Angélica (2020).

In 1990 he starred in Los invertidos by José González Castillo, directed by Alberto Ure at the Teatro San Martín with Cristina Banegas and Lorenzo Quinteros, a production he and others saw as a turning point. Over the following decades he appeared in more than 50 stage works, among them El precio, El reñidero, El avaro, Filomena Marturano, Hamlet, Piel de Judas and the musical Hello, Dolly! with Lucía Galán, directed by Arturo Puig.

From the late 1990s television increasingly cast him as the villain, in Ricos y famosos, Mi ex, Soy gitano, Padre Coraje, Hombres de honor, Se dice amor, Mujeres de nadie, Vidas robadas, Herencia de amor and Herederos de una venganza. He received Martín Fierro nominations for Soy gitano and for Hombres de honor and Se dice amor, and won the award for supporting actor in drama for his work in Valientes and Herencia de amor. In 2018 he played Roberto Sánchez in his mature years in Sandro de América, directed by Adrián Caetano, winning the Martín Fierro for lead actor in a miniseries. His last stage work was Vamo' los pibes, which opened at the Multiteatro in Buenos Aires in January 2026 with Osvaldo Laport, Raúl Lavié and Osvaldo Santoro.

From 1973 to 1980 Grimau was in a relationship with the actress Leonor Manso. Their son, Lucas Antonio Rebolini, was born in 1974 and died in a Buenos Aires hospital in February 2010. Grimau also had two daughters, Luciana and Antonia, from later relationships.

He was a devoted supporter of the football club Huracán. In 2021 he spent almost two months in hospital with Covid-19, needed respiratory support and lost 22 kilos, but returned to the stage after a long recovery. Colleagues also recalled that he had overcome a serious illness some years earlier.

Antonio Grimau died in Buenos Aires at around 11pm on Monday 19 October 2026, aged 82, according to TN. He had been admitted the previous Thursday to the María Ferrer municipal respiratory rehabilitation hospital and was in intensive care. He had been living with diffuse interstitial lung disease, although no medical statement on the immediate cause of death was released. A week earlier he had withdrawn from a planned summer play with Andrea del Boca in Villa Carlos Paz because of his health.

The Argentine Actors Association announced his death on Tuesday 20 October, saying that through his work on stage and screen he had built a solid career that formed part of the history of Argentine entertainment, and sending its sympathy to his family, friends and colleagues. Clarín, La Nación, Infobae and TN all marked his death the same day.

Grimau's career traced the arc of Argentine television drama from the golden age of the telenovela to the prestige miniseries. Audiences remembered him first as a leading man and then as a villain they loved to hate, while critics and colleagues valued the discipline of a stage actor who kept working in independent and commercial theatre into his eighties. His portrayal of Sandro, and the Podestá award for an honourable career he received in 2005, stand as recognition of a body of work that spanned more than six decades.