Roberto Maya

Roberto Maya was born on 5 January 1935 in Campinas, in the interior of the state of São Paulo. He was a nephew of the actor Wálter Forster, a pioneer of Brazilian radio and television drama. He studied at the Escola de Arte Dramática (EAD) in São Paulo, later part of the University of São Paulo, but left without completing the course, and began working as a radio actor in the 1950s.

Maya's work in radio drama led to invitations to work in dubbing and then in film. He made his screen debut in Teus Olhos Castanhos (1961), directed by Ibáñez Filho, and went on to appear in Juventude e Ternura (1966) and many other films. On television he acted in telenovelas on the Tupi network, including Simplesmente Maria (1968), O Profeta and Éramos Seis (1977). In the 1970s and 1980s he appeared in a string of popular films produced in the Boca do Lixo district of São Paulo, such as A Noite dos Imorais (1979) and Os Rapazes da Difícil Vida Fácil (1980). His voice work included the Brazilian voice of the tiger Shere Khan in Disney's The Jungle Book.

In 1983 he played the villain César Brandão in Ivani Ribeiro's telenovela Final Feliz on TV Globo. In the same year the new Rede Manchete invited him to be one of the presenters of Jornal da Manchete, an innovative two hour newscast with a team of anchors. He stayed with the programme until 1989, when the journalist and director Nelson Hoineff asked him to present Documento Especial. The programme, first broadcast on 2 August 1989 under the subtitle Televisão Verdade, combined hard reporting on social problems with poetic scripts, careful use of music and strong images, and Maya's narration became its signature. It moved to SBT in 1992, where it ran until 1995 and won the Troféu Imprensa for best news programme three times, and then had a season on Rede Bandeirantes in 1997 and 1998.

After Documento Especial he returned to acting from time to time, in the film Cafuné (2005), the Globo telenovela Paraíso Tropical (2007) and the series As Brasileiras (2012). He retired in 2016.

Maya was born and died in Campinas and kept close ties with his family there. Reports of his death named a nephew as the relative who confirmed the news. Little else about his private life was made public.

Roberto Maya died on the night of Tuesday 27 October 2026 at the Hospital da Beneficência Portuguesa in Campinas, São Paulo, where he had been admitted. He was 91. The cause was respiratory failure. The news was shared on 28 October by the journalist Luiz Santoro, his former colleague on the Jornal da Manchete desk, who wrote that his friend had died the day before, and by the Brazilian Museum of Radio and Television (MBRTV), which said the death had been confirmed by his nephew. SBT published a note in which its board expressed solidarity with his family and friends and thanked him for his years with the network. Funeral arrangements had not been announced when the first reports appeared.

Maya is remembered above all as the voice of Documento Especial, one of the most decorated documentary programmes in Brazilian television history, which brought subjects such as poverty, violence and the plight of the Kaiowá people to a mass audience. Colleagues and viewers recalled his calm authority and distinctive voice, and his long career spanned radio drama, dubbing, cinema, telenovelas and television news across more than five decades.