On Friday, July 22, the death of Meche Carreño, an actress who enjoyed multiple awards for her artistic career in Mexican cinema of the 60s and 70s, was announced. The artist died in the United States due to complications from liver cancer. She was 74 years old.
N+ recommends you: Actress Meche Carreño dies at 74 years of age
María de las Mercedes Carreño Nava was born on September 15, 1947 in Minatitlán, Veracruz. As a child, she moved with her mother to Mexico City where, years later, she would find her vocation at the Andrés Soler Acting Academy.
From this point Carreño would develop his artistic talent in the theater, especially in the experimental aspect, participating in happeningsmodeling opportunities and collaborating with artists such as Alejandro Jodorowsky and Carlos Ancira.
It was then that she met and married the photographer and businessman José Lorenzo Zakany Almada, founder of the production company Uranio Films. Zakany gave Carreño the opportunity to break into the cinema with her own projects, first with Damiana and the men (1967) and later with There are no crosses in the sea (1968).
In those years, Mexican audiences began to be seduced by the strange beauty with which Meche Carreño adorned the big screen, a charm that would transform her into a “sex symbol” throughout the 70s.
In the first half of the decade, Carreño worked hand in hand with directors such as José Gálvez (Azul1972) and Rogelio A. Gonzalez (the innocent1972), but it was in a project of the latter (the enemy blood1971) where he fell in the crosshairs of Emilio “el Indio” Fernández, a legend of Mexican cinema who built his reputation in the 40s and 50s.
“El Indio” Fernández invited Carreño to his next project, shocks her, a 1974 film shot in Oaxaca in which he shares credits with Pilar Pellicer in the leading role. The film transcends Carreño’s famous nude in the river and the recognition that reaches the hands of both actresses in the form of the Ariel award.
Carreño’s erotic scenes became more explicit in the next film by “El Indio” Fernández, (Red zone1976), but by then Carreño had been inclined to participate exclusively in the projects of Juan Manuel Torres Sáenz, with whom he had fallen in love after filming the other virginity.
By then Carreño was already divorced from Zakany. The actress married Torres and together they made three more films (Life changes, The sea and The perfect woman), until the director’s tragic death in a car accident in Mexico City in 1980.
Devastated by the sudden death of her husband, Carreño began to move away from the cinema, participating only in projects of close friends. It was then that the paths of Juan Gabriel and Meche Carreño crossed.
El Divo de Juárez first invited Carreño to record a music video for the song I have come to apologize, which sparked controversy for the sensual dance of the actress. She later participated in a couple of films starring Juan Gabriel: El Noa Noa (1981) y It’s my life (1982).
Carreño subsequently retired from acting, moving to France and then to the United States. In 2009 she was honored at the Guanajuato International Film Festival, then a short expression festival. The actress had two children, José Zakany Carreño, with her first husband, and Juan María Torres, who died at the age of 12 in a car accident.
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