Max Kerlow
Date of birth: 1928-03-03
Place of birth: Mexico City, Mexico
Known for: Acting
Also known as:
Biography
Prolific Mexican actor with more than 100 films in his filmography. His first intention was to be a painter. However, life would take him on other paths and his incursion into the world of the arts would be as an architect, a career he studied at the suggestion of a cousin just out of school, given his interest in painting, and from which he graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1954. Shortly after, he dedicated himself to promoting crafts with artists such as Manuel Felguérez and Felipe Ehrenberg, one of his first assistants. With Felguérez he devised a different line of ceramics and with Ehrenberg he invented a technique for painting on amate paper, which he later taught to indigenous people in the facilities of his café-gallery La Amargura, located on the street of the same name in the San Ángel neighborhood. As a painter he only mounted one exhibition, although every day he drew and made caricatures from the news in the newspapers: "One ends up with more or less possibilities of doing what one wanted, although, as Picasso said, at this age is when one has more desire to do things; I feel that one understands them better, knows better what one wants to do, but it is already too late," he acknowledges in the documentary by Carolina Kerlow. However, it would be in the acting facet in which he would stand out the most and which would give Max Kerlow the most satisfaction. He began his career in Mexican cinema in 1963 under the direction of Juan José Gurrola in Confesión de Stavroguin. A friend of directors such as Paul Leduc, Felipe Cazals and Arturo Ripstein, it was natural for him to be invited to participate in their films, although Max Kerlow assured that he always liked acting: "I was invited to parties sometimes just to tell jokes; I have my diploma as a joke teller". He was also a magician. He was even able to combine his interests: "When Miguel Littin said "we are going to Chihuahua to film Actas de Marusia (1976), I took the opportunity to bring my catalogs and sold my crafts very well". And he was not just any actor making any movie. His film performances are proof of his histrionic quality. He participated in Las Poquianchis (1976), El apando (Felipe Cazals / 1976), Fox Trot (Arturo Ripstein / 1976); Frida, naturaleza viva (Paul Leduc / 1983), where he played the role of Leon Trotsky, Cabeza de Vaca (Nicolas Echevarria / 1991); Cómodas mensualidades (Julian Pastor / 1992); Kino (Felipe Cazals / 1993); De noche vienes Esmeralda (Jaime Humberto Hermosillo / 1997); La hija del caníbal o Lucía, Lucía (Antonio Serrano / 2003), Morirse está en hebreo (Alejandro Springall / 2007); Cinco días sin Nora (Mariana Chenillo, 2008). In 1998 he won the Ariel Award for best male co-acting for his performance in Por si no te vuelvo a ver (Juan Pablo Villaseñor, 1997), debut film of the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC). In the Italian film Mediterráneo (1991), directed by Gabriele Salvatores, winner of the Oscar for best foreign film, Max Kerlow had a leading role. He also participated in documentaries and commercials.
Movie Credits
Espíritu deportivo
2004-10-01
Juegos nocturnos
1992-01-01
The Humiliated
1986-01-01
Four nuns are raped by a group of lepers. Although they all turn out to be pregnant, their status is
Celestina
1976-01-01
A Wonderful World
2006-03-17
A fairy tale about the political and socioeconomic realities of Mexico.
The Mansion of Madness
1973-08-10
The inmates of an insane asylum take over the institution, imprison the doctors and staff, and then
Macho y hembras
1987-01-01
Mexican feature film
Las buenas costumbres
1990-01-01
Mexican feature film
Reed: Insurgent Mexico
1973-01-05
A dramatization of John Reed's newspaper accounts of the Mexican Revolution. Considered the first re
I Escaped from Devil's Island
1973-09-01
In 1916, a group of prisoners plot their escape from the notorious fortress located in French Guiana
The Aztec Karate Fighter
1976-11-24
Potter who makes fake pre-Colombian statues gets mixed up with thieves and treasure-hunters at an Az
Las Poquianchis
1976-11-17
During the mid-1970s, in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, authorities discover a clandestine burial
Brothers of the Wind
1977-08-24
The Diabolical
1977-11-24
Dave Boland (Carlos East) wears a strange medallion and robs the bank. He also takes the banker's da
Va de Nuez
1986-01-01
El perro y la calentura
1976-01-01
Mexican feature film
Aunt Isabel's Garden
1972-04-05
A ship carrying Conquistadors is wrecked and the survivors are thrown ashore to struggle through the
El viaje
1977-06-28
After the death of his mother, a man agrees to travel to Europe as a tourist guide falls in love wit
Cuentos de Principes y Princesas
1981-01-01
En defensa propia
1978-11-15
The leading edge of working-class discontent in a Mexican village is a troop of bandits hiding out i
What Do You Think?
1986-08-01
Award-Winning filmmaker Paul Leduc (Frida, Naturaleza Viva, Reed: Insurgent Mexico, Barroco) directe
The Bees
1978-11-01
Corporate smuggling of South American killer bees into the United States results in huge swarms terr
Pasa en las mejores familias
1987-01-01
Mexican feature film
Murieron a la mitad del rio
1986-01-01
El cielo subterraneo
1988-01-01
Mexican feature film
Cabeza de Vaca
1991-10-11
In 1528, a Spanish expedition flounders off the coast of Florida with 600 lives lost. One survivor,
Bandidos
1991-08-09
In the wake of the Mexican Revolution, a band of pre-teen boys are forced to rely on their own resou
Cómodas mensualidades
1992-01-24
Young married guy is overwhelmed by the expenses involved with starting a family.
Dentro de la noche
1991-01-01
The Queen of the Night
1994-09-07
The legendary life of Mexican singer Lucha Reyes is the basis of this fictionalized biography ( or a
Lucía, Lucía
2003-01-17
Lucia, an children's book author, tells the story of her husband's disappearance. One day on their w
La última noche
2005-02-25
This film is different from the previous ones; its themes are more mature, and the characters and si
El tesoro de Clotilde
1994-11-03
Clotilde dies, and her god-daughter has promised to carry out a final wish for her. Two gangs of thi
El Viaje de la Nonna
2008-02-07
A Mexican family, wanting to grant their Grandmother her last wish, embarks on a make believe trip t
My Mexican Shivah
2007-10-26
After Moishe's death, family and friends sit Shiva in Mexico City. During seven days, secrets will b
Viva San Isidro!
1995-04-13
Perfume, efecto inmediato
1994-01-01
A cosmetologist invents a perfume that helps her sister seduce her boss. When her boss realizes the
Sea of Dreams
2006-11-09
On an island across the sea lies a village full of romance, wonder and mystery; a timeless place whe
Luces de la noche
1998-05-29
On a whim, a retired gentleman decides to track down an old girlfriend from decades back.
Moctezuma's Revenge
2002-01-01
Mexican feature film
Bodas Negras
1994-12-31
Short produced by TV Azteca, starring José Alonso, Leonor Bonilla and Sergio Bonilla
Nora's Will
2008-10-06
Jose learns that Nora, the woman he was married to for 30 years and from whom divorced, has committe
Three Stories of Love
1978-01-01
Three people live in the same building: An anxious teenager, a girl who wants to be kidnapped by a p
If I Never See You Again
1997-11-18
Five elderly men form a music group and run away from the nursing home where they are interns with t
Compassionate Sex
2000-06-30
Dolores is a mature and kind woman whose husband abandons her because he can't stand her uncanny gen
Frida Still Life
1986-03-13
This film is a chronicle of painter Frida Kahlo, and her encounter with the personalities of her tim
The Heist
1976-08-05
In Mexico City's infamous Lecumberri prison, three drug-addicted convicts celebrate getting drugs fr
Remembrance
2003-07-19
The documentary film Remembrance is an outline of the past century taking as a motif the life of Lui
Ziuta Travesías
2024-07-05
Ziuta, Polish, Jewish and survivor of the Second World War, was an extraordinary woman who aroused s
La casta divina
1977-11-17
Chronicle Caste War in Yucatan held in the nineteenth century, where the land and the people were th
The Prophet Mimi
1973-12-27
Childhood trauma and religious repression causes little boy to grow up and murder .
Pubertinaje
1971-02-09
Three episodes: 1) "A Christmas dinner" where the family members fantasize about being somewhere els
Sex Education In Brief Lessons
1997-07-25
Alejandra and Ana are college friends, both are virgin and hope to find the love of their life soon
I Murder Seriously
2002-10-11
A cop sets out to find a man who has been delivering too much of a good thing in this offbeat comedy
Naufragio
1978-11-02
One woman lives waiting for her son who is a sailor. She hasn't seen him for years although he write
Maria of My Heart
1979-05-17
Héctor and María meet again after eight years of not seeing each other. She works as a magician in c
Esmeralda Comes by Night
1997-09-05
The husbands of a charismatic nurse devise a plan to free her from prison when she is arrested for b
Foxtrot
1976-03-01
A Romanian aristocrat retreats to a desert isle with his wife and servants on the eve of World War I
The Apple of Discord
1968-01-01
A man convinces two friends to rob and kill a landowner.
The Coming of the King Olmos
1975-09-11
After spending some time with the Mennonite community in Chihuahua, Reynaldo Olmos goes back to Mexi
Those Years
1974-03-21
President Juárez fights against the conservatives, who have ordered an emperor to be brought from Fr
Letters from Marusia
1975-12-26
Chronicle of the repression that a foreign company exerts on the miners of a small nitrate town in C
Kino: The Legend of the Black Priest
1993-05-07
Propped up on his deathbed, a 17th century Spanish missionary named Father Kino (Enrique Rocha) look
One Hundred Years with Juan Rulfo
2017-11-03
This documentary explores key moments in the life of writer Juan Rulfo, with artists such as Werner
Love, Pain and Vice Versa
2008-02-10
Chelo is an architect, withdrawing from her social life because of realistic dreams she's having of