Trivia

She hosts a TV show program about real life situations.

She used to own a theater which carried her name. It was later closed and the property sold.

Her mother María Luisa Hidalgo Aguilar was 16 years of age at the time of her birth and was from the town of Zinacantepec in the state of Mexico. No father was listed in the birth certificate.

Her family is known as La dinastía Pinal.

Pinal achieved international recognition by starring in a famous film trilogy directed by Luis Buñuel: Viridiana (1961), The Exterminating Angel (1962) and Simon of the Desert (1965).

In addition to her film career, Pinal was a pioneer in Mexican musical theatre, ventured into television, and held political office.

She was one of Mexico's greatest female stars, particularly from the Golden Age of Mexican cinema and part of the Golden Age of Hollywood for her film Shark (1969).

Silvia Pinal was a Mexican actress. She began her career in theatre, venturing into cinema in 1949.

Pinal had legal problems in 2000 due to conflicts with her management as the president of the Association of Theater Producers (Protea) in the early 1990s. For this reason, the actress lived in Miami, United States, for some time. After eleven months, the proceedings were vacated and the actress returned to her country.

Her parents were María Luisa Hidalgo Aguilar and Moisés Pasquel. Pasquel was an orchestra conductor at radio station XEW by whom Hidalgo Aguilar became pregnant when she was 15 years old. Her father did not acknowledge Pinal as his child, and she did not know him until she was 11 years old.

Pinal gained success and recognition in 1954 after appearing in the film Un extraño en la escalera (1955) directed by Tulio Demicheli where she starred alongside Arturo de Córdova. Initially, de Córdova preferred either the Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida or the Cuban rumba dancer Rosa Carmina as his co-stars, due to his reservations about Pinal's youth. With the support of the producer Gregorio Walerstein, Pinal transformed her image, emphasizing her sex appeal, which ultimately led to de Córdova's approval for the role. The movie became a major success, solidifying Pinal's status as a leading film actress.

Her third and last project with Viridiana (1961) was Simon of the Desert (1965). The film, misrepresented as a medium-length feature, was initially conceived as an episodic film. Pinal and Gustavo Alatriste looked for Federico Fellini to direct a second episode, but Fellini accepted only on the condition that his wife Giulietta Masina star in it. They then sought out Jules Dassin who likewise said he would accept the project only on the condition that his wife, Melina Mercouri, star; Pinal also rejected this condition. The idea was that Pinal should star in all the episodes, so Buñuel ended up filming the project himself. In the film, Pinal also made the first nude appearance in her career, an act still rare in Mexican cinema and the first nude scene in Buñuel's films.

Pinal went to study opera and began preparing by taking classes, first with a private teacher and then with Professor Reyes Retana.

At the music academy, Pinal auditioned for a role in the opera La Traviata. However, the audition was a failure. A teacher encouraged her to take acting courses at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), where she was a classmate of figures such as Carlos Pellicer, Salvador Novo and Xavier Villaurrutia. She debuted as an extra in a performance of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

She produced the Mexican versions of the musicals A Chorus Line (1989), Cats (1991) and La Cage aux Folles (1992).

To protect older actors, she founded the Asociación Rafael Banquells, in charge of providing non-profit help to performers. As president of the association, Pinal delivered the Bravo Awards for highlights in music, film, theater, radio, television, dubbing and commercial realization during the year. The awards have been given annually since 1991.

Her breakthrough participation was in the comedy The King of the Neighborhood (1950) co-starring with Germán Valdés and directed by Gilberto Martínez Solares.

Pinal made her theatrical debut at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes. Eventually, she acted in experimental plays, then worked at the Ideal Theater in Mexico City.Outside of this company, in 1950, she participated in the play Celos del aire with Manolo Fábregas and Carmen Montejo.

The actor and comedian Cantinflas (her wedding godfather) chose Pinal as his co-star in El portero (1950).

Pinal decided to produce her telenovelas; her first hit was Mañana es primavera (1982) the last acting work of her daughter Viridiana Alatriste before her death.

She studied first at Pestalozzi College in Cuernavaca and then at the Washington Institute in Mexico City. Despite her artistic aspirations, her father cautioned her to look for "something useful", so she learned to type.

Her first step toward fame occurred when she was invited to participate in a beauty pageant. In this contest, Pinal obtained the title of Student Princess of Mexico. At her coronation, she met the actors Rubén Rojo and Manolo Fábregas with whom she became close friends.

Despite the success and prestige the Luis Buñuel movie Viridiana (1961) was rejected by the Spanish censorship board (Spain was under the Francisco Franco dictatorship) and the Vatican at the time, who described the film as blasphemous. The film was saved through Pinal's intervention, when she fled to Mexico with a copy. The Vatican censorship also resonated in Mexico, but with the help of Salvador Novo, the film had a limited release.

Pinal had her first contact with Luis Buñuel through Mexican actor Ernesto Alonso with the firm intention of starring in the film version of Benito Pérez Galdós's novel Tristana (1970). However, the tiny commercial success of Buñuel's films prevented the producers from financing the project. By the end of the 1960s, Buñuel shot the film in Spain with Catherine Deneuve instead. Years later, Pinal, with the help of her second husband, producer Gustavo Alatriste looked for Buñuel in Spain and convinced him to film Viridiana (1961). It was the winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Fifteen days after she debuted in the theater, Pinal made her debut in the cinema with a brief role in Bamba (1949) starring Carmen Montejo and directed by Miguel Contreras Torres.

At age 14, she began working as a secretary at Kodak.

Pinal's won her first Silver Ariel as a supporting actress for her performance in the film Un rincón cerca del cielo (1952), where she worked with actor and singer Pedro Infante.

When she was five years old, her mother married Luis G. Pinal, a journalist, military man, and politician 20 years her senior. Pinal subsequently adopted Silvia as his daughter and, in later interviews, she described Pinal as her only father.

Died on the same day where also died Roberto Gómez Bolaños 10 years after.