With great consternation, the Ministry of Culture, the National Council of Performing Arts and the Artistic Agency of Performing Arts ACTUAR mourn the death in Havana, at the age of 77, of the first actor Enrique Molina, National Television Award 2020, ACTUAR Award for the Work of Life 2018 and Honorary Title in the first edition of the Enrique Almirante Award, in 2015.
His death occurred as a result of complications derived from Covid-19 and after being admitted under the care of a multidisciplinary team of medical personnel, who fought until the last hours to save his life.
Molina was a renowned actor on television, cinema, theater and radio, with a long and consolidated artistic and professional career. Of humble origin, he was born on October 31, 1943 in Bauta municipality (former province of Havana, today Artemisa), to later move with his family, being very young, to Santiago de Cuba.
In that eastern province, he began to take the first steps in acting within the amateur artist movement in the 60’s.
Later, in Havana, he managed to consolidate his career to become one of the most outstanding actors along with great artists and experienced directors, placing himself in the preference and likes of the public.
In the popular imagination, his masterful performances still survive in dramatized spaces for television, such as the Silvestre Cañiso of Tierra brava, together with Alina Rodríguez, and also in the Bajo el misma sol and La otraquina soap operas, among others, as well as in the remembered serial In Silence has had to be.
In the tables, he highlighted his role as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in The Kremlin Chime and later in the miniseries Stories about Lenin, subjected on that occasion to surgeries to change his physique and achieve better results to get into the character’s skin.
The cinema will be totally grateful for the extensive cinematographic work carried out, in films such as The Man from Maisinicú, Caravana, A Paradise Under the Stars, Barrio Cuba, The Horn of Plenty, With you Bread and Onion, and Esther Somewhere, among others.
Throughout his career as an actor, he received the award for best foreign actor at the Festival of the Golden Rooster and the Hundred Flowers of China, in 2014 and 2016, and the title of Artist of Merit from the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television ( ICRT).
Until the moment of his aggravation he was in the preparations to film a new soap opera.
Undoubtedly, his death has caused a deep void in the media, where his presence was a mainstay of the performance, and has had a strong impact on the cultural landscape of the nation.
The Ministry of Culture, the National Council of Performing Arts and the ACTUAR Agency offer their deepest condolences to family, friends and colleagues for the his irreparable loss.
There are no words to describe the pain felt when a small-town artist says goodbye forever. Cuban culture is in mourning.