Peter Gonzales Falcon, the Texas-based actor who starred as a young Federico Fellini in the famed director’s semi-autobiographical 1972 film Roma, has died. He was 75.
The actor’s passing was confirmed by his friend Aurelio Montemayor, who shared news of the death on his Facebook page. Gonzales Falcon was found dead at his home Tuesday, August 22, in La Pryor, Texas, by authorities called there for a safety check.
“My friend, Peter, is no longer with us. I met him during my film-craze days in the 60s & 70s. A Chicano who had a major role in a Fellini film! I was mesmerized by European films of that period, from France, Italy and even Sweden. Roma was entrancing,” Montemayor wrote.
“We had reconnected a few years back and I had been giving him feedback on a film script-in-development and then the Pandemic hit and I lost track of him. Then today his sister called…He grew up in La Pryor and that’s where his life journey ended.”
Gonzales Falcon got his acting break in 1969 with a bit part in Viva Max, a satirical comedy about retaking the Alamo. He was then tapped by Fellini to play the younger version of himself in the documentary-style film Roma, where he portrayed the director during the 1930s and 1940s while living in Rome.
In a 2018 interview, Gonzales Falcon shared that his agent had work in other Italian films lined up for him after Roma, but a death in the family forced him to return home to Texas.
He would go on to work as a model for a year in London before appearing in several films in Mexico. He also had a one-episode role in a 1974 episode of the TV series Police Woman and starred in the 1977 TV movie Secrets.
His other credits include The End (1978), Heartbreaker (1983), and the 1986 CBS TV film Houston: The Legend of Texas. He also played a police chief in Gregory Nava’s Texas-set Bordertown (2007) alongside Jennifer Lopez and Martin Sheen.
More recently, Gonzales Falcon played an Italian chef in Tiramisu for Two (2016) and appeared in the horror film Dis (2018).
He is survived by his daughters, Ariana and Talula, and sister Maria.
