Raúl Juliá: 1940-1994: Actor, humanitarian

Versatile stage and screen actor Raúl Juliá produced a huge body of critically successful work before his untimely death in 1994. The handsome Puerto Rican actor earned four Tony Award nominations on the New York stage, and played roles in such films as Kiss of the Spider Woman, Romero, Presumed Innocent, The Addams Family, and The Burning Season. A Chicago The actor added, "It is hard to explain what that experience feels like—making people laugh or cry, become moved or inspired—but it is unique. You become one with them." He also was passionately involved with the Hunger Project, an aid organization, and often chose roles that would bring attention to social injustice.

Raúl Rafael Carlos Juliá y Arcelay, the eldest of four children, was born on March 9, 1940, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was the son of Raúl Juliá and Olga Arcelay, an amateur singer. Juliá's father, who studied engineering in the United States, later opened an auto body repair shop and a chicken restaurant, and claimed to have introduced pizza to the island. Like most Puerto Ricans, Juliá was raised Roman Catholic. He credited his interest in the theater to his great aunt, María González, who was a singer of zarzuelas, or Spanish operettas. Juliá recalled life with his family as being very musical, dramatic, and full of laughter.

Fell in Love with Acting Early

Juliá got his start on the stage in first grade. While playing the devil in his school play, the usually shy five-year-old leapt onto the stage, let out an alarming howl, rolled around on the floor, and then proceeded with his lines. The audience thought he was having some kind of seizure. In the book Raúl Juliá: Actor and Humanitarian, Juliá recalled: "It was a marvelous experience. I entered and let go of myself. I became sort of possessed or something." When he saw legendary actor Errol Flynn in the movie Robin Hood, Juliá decided that acting was for him. By the seventh grade he was fluent in English, and had fallen in love with the works of William Shakespeare.

To appease his parents, Juliá enrolled in college, though he switched majors from psychology to medicine to law, finally earning a bachelor's degree in liberal arts from the Universidad de Puerto Rico. He became involved in San Juan's theater scene, appearing on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, and was part of a singing group called the Lamplighters. His parents were shocked but supportive when Juliá told them he was moving to New York City to pursue acting.

At a Glance . . .

Born Raúl Rafael Carlos Juliá y Arcelay on March 9, 1940, in San Juan, Puerto Rico; died on October 24, 1994, in Manhasset, NY; son of Raúl Juliá (an engineer and entrepreneur) and Olga Arcelay (an amateur singer); married Magda Vasallo (divorced, 1969); married Merel Poloway (a dancer-actress), 1976; children: two sons. Education: University of Puerto Rico, BA.

Career: Actor, theater, 1964-1992, film 1971-1994.

Memberships: Phoebe Brand's Theater in the Street, actor, 1964; New York Shakespeare Festival, actor, 1960s, member of the board of directors, 1980s; The Hunger Project, advocate, 1977-94.

Awards: Screen Actors Guild Award, outstanding performance by a male actor in a TV movie or miniseries, 1994, for The Burning Season; Golden Globe Award, best performance by an actor in a mini-series or motion picture made for television, 1995, for The Burning Season; Emmy Award, outstanding lead actor in a miniseries or special, 1995, for The Burning Season; Hispanic Heritage Award, lifetime achievement, 1995; inducted into Theatre Hall of Fame, 1996.

Juliá arrived in New York during a snowstorm in 1964, having never before seen snow. He struggled to get by, sharing a one-room apartment with a fellow Puerto Rican, and sold pens and worked as a telemarketer to earn a meager living. He attended the theater whenever he could afford it, went to all open casting calls, and started taking acting classes from Wynn Handman, the artistic director of the American Place Theater.

It took the young actor two months to land a role in the off-Broadway, Spanish-language play La Vida es Sueño. He reluctantly accepted an allowance from his family to help make ends meet, but a subsequent role playing Conrad Birdie in the musical Bye Bye Birdie paid well enough for him to support himself—for the run of the show, at least. He also was involved with street theater companies, including Phoebe Brand's Theater in the Street and the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, which usually performed in poor New York City neighborhoods.

Career Ranged From Shakespeare to Soaps

In 1967 Juliá became involved with the New York Shakespeare Festival (NYSF), a group that produced free summer performances in Central Park, and Joseph Papp, NYSF's powerful producer and director, noticed the actor's great potential. Juliá's first production with NYSF was Titus Andronicus, in which he portrayed Demitrius, a murderer who is himself murdered, baked into a pie, and served to his mother. Juliá married his childhood sweetheart from Puerto Rico, Magda Vasallo, in 1965. The two survived some of Juliá's most trying years as an actor, but were divorced in 1969.

Juliá made his Broadway debut in September of 1968 as the servant Chan in The Cuban Thing, which closed after only one performance. He was then noticed by theater critics in Indians, in a triple role as a Mexican Indian, a German actor, and a Russian grand duke. A part he performed in The Castro Complex was praised by some critics as the only worthwhile aspect of the production. Though Juliá always made an effort to resist being typecast in Hispanic roles, he refused to change his name to something that sounded less ethnic. His diverse body of work, however, is proof that Juliá managed to avoid typecasting.

Juliá became a mainstream hit in 1970 during his turn on the TV soap opera Love of Life, an experience he considered "the very pit of my life," as noted in Raúl Juliá: Actor and Humanitarian. He had a more rewarding experience during a run as Rafael the Fixit Man on Sesame Street. He also took small film roles in The Organization, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, and The Panic in Needle Park. His return to the stage in the Shakespearean comedy Two Gentlemen of Verona garnered Juliá his first Tony award nomination. Juliá was passionate about Shakespeare, and during the course of his career would act in more than a dozen of the Bard's plays, including King Lear and As You Like It. He received a second Tony nomination for his 1974 portrayal of Charley Wykeham, a student who impersonates his aunt, in Where's Charley?

Theater Career Gave Way to Movies

Juliá convincingly replaced his Latin accent for the role of Macheath, a sinister Briton also known as Mack the Knife, in The Threepenny Opera, and earned a third Tony nomination. He married dancer Merel Poloway in 1976, and the couple had two sons. In 1977 he became involved with the Hunger Project, a charity whose goal was to eradicate world hunger, and he would remain an active supporter of the cause for the rest of his life. He also traveled to El Salvador in 1994 as a ballot observer in an election there, and was passionately dedicated to children's causes.

Juliá played Petruchio opposite Meryl Streep in a Broadway production of The Taming of the Shrew. As described in Raúl Juliá: Actor and Humanitarian, when Joseph Papp saw the performance he commented, "I thought he began to show himself as one of the major actors in this country." Although Papp had witnessed Juliá's talent before, "I'd never seen it so completely realized as when I saw him out there." Juliá was at work filming an adaptation of Shakespeare's Tempest in Rome in 1982, when he was offered a role in Nine, a 1982 play based on Federico Fellini's film 8 1/2. Nine was a breakthrough challenge for Juliá, who earned a fourth Tony nomination for his performance. As his popularity with moviegoers increased, Juliá drew heftier salaries for his stage roles.

Juliá's film career took off in the 1980s. While he made numerous movies during this era, he only appeared in a handful of plays, including Nine, Designs for Living, and Arms and the Man. Critics adored Juliá in Tempest, where he played Caliban, a bawdy goatherd on a Greek island who is met by the lead character, an adventure-seeking New York architect.

Became Leading Man in Major Films

Kiss of the Spider Woman, based on the novel by Argentine author Manuel Puig, was perhaps the most important film of Juliá's career. Juliá plays Valentín, a political prisoner who survives torture rather than betray his communist comrades. Juliá spent time with South American revolutionaries and lost 30 pounds for the role. In the film Valentín shares a prison cell with Molina, a gay man played by William Hurt, to whom he tells fantastic stories of the Spider Woman in order to pass the time. The two men end up forging a deep and complex bond, conveyed in roles superbly played by both actors. "What emerges from the film is a portrait of the dilemmas of art and politics, fantasy and reality, femininity and masculinity, and despair and hope," wrote Michael Blowen of the Boston Globe. "It is a brilliant, provocative account of what happens when two people find a strange form of love while helplessly trapped in the enveloping web suggested by the title." Though Hurt received most of the accolades, critics praised Juliá lavishly. Juliá "expresses the gradual self-doubt of a man who made a quick political decision and now must suffer the long, ugly consequences," according to Blowen. When Hurt accepted an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the film, he did so in both of their names.

Juliá followed up the intense Kiss of the Spider Woman with a role opposite Susan Sarandon in the romantic comedy Compromising Positions. He then appeared opposite Jane Fonda in the thriller The Morning After. In a salute to his native island, Juliá accepted a small role in La Gran Fiesta, the first film made in Puerto Rico. In The Penitent he plays a peasant who portrays Christ in a ritual reenactment of Christ's death, and who must then die as Christ did. Although audiences did not agree, Juliá believed the film was on a par with Kiss of the Spider Woman.

The late 1980s were even busier for Juliá, who appeared mostly in leading roles. Critics thought Juliá's talents were wasted in Moon Over Parador, but his role in Romero was widely acclaimed. In Romero he played Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, a human rights advocate who was assassinated in El Salvador. Juliá took the film very seriously. He felt obligated to do justice to this important character, and also wanted to draw attention to human rights violations in Central America. In 1990 Juliá played defense lawyer Alejandro "Sandy" Stern opposite Harrison Ford in the murder mystery Presumed Innocent. He spent long hours with actual criminal attorneys to research the role of Stern, who is fighting a corrupt legal system.

Juliá may best be known to modern audiences for his 1991 role in The Addams Family, a motion picture version of Charles Addams's morbid but loveable cartoons and the 1960s television series they inspired. The film, which also starred Angelica Huston and Christopher Lloyd, "is more laughs than a casketful of whoopee cushions at a mortician's convention," critic Rita Kempley wrote in the Washington Post. Lest someone accuse him of selling out by taking a role in a blockbuster movie, Juliá was quick to point out the finer merits of the job. "I'm grateful that it was [successful], but nobody knew it was going to be such a huge success," he said in an interview with Cigar Aficionado. Playing Gomez, he said, allowed him to be "as theatrical as I want to be … he sings, he dances, he sword fights. I've always wanted to do those swash-buckling things. It's one of the reasons I became an actor, to do those things, and I get to do them as Gomez." Juliá was able to portray Gomez again in the 1993 sequel to the film, Addams Family Values. The Christian Science Monitor wrote, "As smartly produced and smoothly directed as the original, it has a more bitingly satirical plot and a steadier stream of laugh-out-loud dialogue."

Demanding Schedule Lead to Untimely Death

In 1992 Juliá returned to the stage in a Broadway revival of Man of La Mancha. The demands of performing the musical eight times a week took a heavy toll on Juliá, and reviews were mixed. In a Chicago Tribune review, critic Richard Christiansen wrote, "Juliá's performance at this point rates at least a respectful watch … but the show already looks tired because it is not projected with the confidence and precision necessary to sustain its intermissionless length."

Julia went on to star, along side Edward James Olmos and Sonia Braga, in the 1994 HBO film The Burning Season, a movie based on the true story of Chico Mendes, a Brazilian laborer who launched a campaign to save the Amazon rain forest. The role deeply affected Julia because of its intensity. "It is astounding what emotions this man had to go through to reach his goals," Juliá told the Orange County Register. "There were intense passions, seemingly insurmountable conflicts and gut-wrenching soul-searching that faced him all along the way."

Juliá became sick with food poisoning while making The Burning Season, and had to be airlifted to Mexico City for medical treatment. Stomach surgery he had undergone earlier in the year may have exacerbated the problem, and it took an extraordinary toll on the actor. He lost 45 pounds, but took little time off to recover. After The Burning Season he immediately went to work on the action film Street Fighter, a big-screen version of the video game, in which he played the evil villain General M. Bison. The film was a departure for Juliá, who is known for his highly respected body of work. He took the role in large part at the urging of his sons, who were great fans of the video game.

Juliá was hospitalized for stomach pains after attending an opera with his wife on October 16, 1994. Later that night he suffered a stroke, or brain hemorrhage. Doctors believed he could recover, but his condition worsened until he fell into a coma and, on October 24, 1994, died from complications of the stroke. His body was flown to Puerto Rico, where a massive service was held. A number of services were also held across the United States in the following weeks. Those who knew him personally were shocked and devastated at his early death. Those who did not know him mourned the immensely talented Puerto Rican actor whose work had enriched their lives. He received posthumous Screen Actors Guild, Golden Globe, and Emmy awards for his role in The Burning Season.

Selected works

Theater

Life is a Dream (La Vida Es Sueño), 1964.

Bye Bye Birdie, 1965.

Titus Andronicus, 1966, 1967.

The Cuban Thing, 1968.

Your Own Thing, 1968.

Indians, 1969.

The Castro Complex, 1970.

Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1971.

As You Like It, 1973.

Where's Charley?, 1974.

The Threepenny Opera, 1976.

The Cherry Orchard, 1977.

The Taming of the Shrew, 1978.

Othello, 1979.

Betrayal, 1980.

Nine, 1982.

Designs for Living, 1984.

Arms and the Man, 1985.

Man of la Mancha, 1992.

Film

The Organization, 1971.

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, 1971.

The Panic in Needle Park, 1971.

The Tempest, 1982.

Kiss of the Spider Woman, 1985.

Compromising Positions, 1985.

La Gran Fiesta, 1986.

Trading Hearts, 1987.

Moon Over Parador, 1988.

Romero, 1989.

Presumed Innocent, 1990.

The Addams Family, 1991.

The Plague, 1992.

Addams Family Values, 1993.

The Burning Season, 1994.

Street Fighter, 1994.

Sources

Books

Cruz, Bárbara C., Raúl Juliá: Actor and Humanitarian, Enslow Publishers, 1998.

Periodicals

Boston Globe, October 20, 1995, p. 58; March 18, 1994, p. 2; November 9, 2001, p. E6.

Chicago Tribune, November 20, 1991, p. 26; October 25, 1994, p. 11.

Christian Science Monitor, November 19, 1993.

Orange County Register, September 17, 1994, p. F5.

People, November 29, 1993, p. 14; November 7, 1994, p. 127.

USA Today, October 25, 1994, p. D1.

Washington Post, September 8, 1989, p. B7; November 22, 1991, p. B1; February 22, 1992, p. G1; October 25, 1994, p. B6; October 28, 1994, p. B1.

On-line

"Only As Good As The Memories: Raul Julia has Charted an Unconventional Path Through Film and Stage," Cigar Aficionado, www.cigaraficionado.com/cigar/aficionado/people/ff1293.html (February 5, 2003).

"Raul Julia," Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com (February 5, 2003).

—Brenna Sanchez

Raul Julia

Suave, elegant, and incredibly versatile, Raul Julia (1940-1994) was among the most critically respected stage and screen actors of his generation. Though perhaps best known for his role as Gomez Addams in the Addams Family films of the 1990s, Julia starred in more than 100 productions since 1964, the year he left his native Puerto Rico for the United States. Julia was also a tireless humanitarian who used his celebrity status to draw attention to causes he supported.

Raul Julia was born Raul Rafael Carlos Julia y Arcelay in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on March 9, 1940. The son of upper-middle-class Roman Catholic parents, Julia was the oldest of four children. His father, Raul, was a North American-educated engineer who in 1947 had made a successful (if not exactly lateral) transition to the restaurant business; the elder Julia's eatery, La Cueva del Chicken Inn (The Chicken's Cave Inn), became known not for its numerous chicken dishes, but for its savory mainland export: pizza.

The success of La Cueva del Chicken Inn (which in 2001 was still in operation), and the resulting economic stability of the Julia family, ensured young Julia an above-average education. His early schooling at the Colegio Espiritu Santo de Hato Rey came from North American nuns; it was from these nuns that Julia began to learn English. Julia spent high school immersed in the rigorous classical curriculum of the Jesuits at Colegio San Ignacio de Loyola de Rio Piedras. He briefly studied at the Fordham University School of Law in New York; and, in 1964, he received his degree from the University of Puerto Rico.

After graduating from college, Julia faced a difficult decision: to follow his parents' wishes by continuing to pursue a career in law; or to follow his heart by pursuing a career in the theater. From as early as age five, Julia had been bitten by the acting bug. Although he would be officially "discovered" at age 24 by the American actor Orson Bean, Julia gave his debut performance, as the Devil, in a first-grade play. "I came onstage and I sort of let go and started having a fit," he told Cigar Aficianado magazine in 1993. "My parents thought, 'Oh, my God! What's wrong with him? He's possessed or something.' All of a sudden, I stood up and started saying my lines. From then on, that was it. I knew there was something special about the theater for me, something beyond the regular reality, something that I could get into and transcend and become something other than myself."

Though they didn't approve of his decision to enter the theater, Julia's parents didn't discourage their son from pursuing his dream. In 1964, like Jose Ferrer, Rita Moreno, and other notable Puerto Rico natives before him, Julia left his homeland to begin life as an actor in New York City. His parents supported him financially for the first year, but, as Julia told Cigar Aficianado in 1994, "I made the mistake of telling them, 'I don't need you anymore.' I was making $500 a week playing in Bye-Bye Birdie at the Dallas state fair, and I'm saying to myself, 'I'm set.' Boy, was I sorry." As the financial support from his parents dried up, the paid acting jobs followed suit. Back at home in New York, Julia found himself borrowing money from a roommate and eating scraps to survive. But the industrious actor refused to sit passively: He worked as a Spanish instructor, sold magazine subscriptions, and even took a course to sell department-store pens before, in the late 1960s, his acting career took a great leap forward.

From Stage to Screen: Broadway and Beyond

Though Julia had already been gaining recognition for smaller roles off Broadway, a 1968 production of The Cuban Thing found the actor making his first appearance on a Broadway stage. From there, he said in 1994, "It was like a progression of things. I did one thing. People saw me. Then I'd do another thing. I got more recognized." In 1972 he received the first of his four Antoinette Perry Award (Tony Award) nominations, for his role as Proteus in the musical adaptation of William Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s he worked closely with director and producer Joseph Papp, the renowned New York Shakespeare Festival founder who worked to bring both Shakespearean classics and modern works to the general public. Julia appeared in more than a dozen Papp productions, including the 1976 revival of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera, for which he and the director both received 1977 Tony Award nominations. Papp, who died in 1991, once said of Julia, "He was always outrageous in his acting choices. He's larger than life all the time when he's on the stage. He doesn't mind falling flat on his face doing something dangerous." Remembering Papp in 1993, Julia said, "We became like father and son. He saw what I could offer; he didn't look at my ethnic background. He was a great man with a great vision."

Julia's stage performances revealed an actor with incredible range. He was equally comfortable in comedies, in dramas, and in musicals; and though he retained his Puerto Rican accent throughout his lifetime, he never allowed himself to be pigeonholed as an exclusively "Latin actor." He earned a reputation among directors and producers as a tireless performer, one whose exhaustive character research and consummate professionalism marked him as a model talent. Whether he was playing Dracula (1978), Othello (1979, 1991), or Mack the Knife (1976), Julia injected his stage roles with an enigmatic presence that stretched across cultural lines.

Julia was vocal about his disregard for television. Nevertheless, throughout the 1970s he accepted a few minor TV roles, appearing on The Bob Newhart Show and the soap opera Love of Life, and playing the handyman Rafael on the children's show Sesame Street. Although Hollywood seemed to be the logical next step in his career (previously he had appeared in a handful of TV movies), Julia was hesitant to commit to the big screen. "I didn't resist [the movies], but I wasn't eager to get into them, either," Julia said in 1994. "I was [in New York]. I was happy doing theater. I was even offered some things that I didn't really feel were right for me for a lot of money, more money than I was making in the theater. Even Joe Papp, toward the end, was saying, 'Raul, I know you're committed to the theater; you're committed to the New York Shakespeare Festival, but, you know, think about doing movies, too."'

Papp's advice proved to be sound. Julia made his first North American film appearance in 1969; and though he continued to appear both on and off Broadway, by the mid-1980s he had moved almost exclusively from the stage to the screen. The movies dramatically increased Julia's public profile, yet he preferred to take smaller roles that he found to be closer to his heart. For his co-starring role as the South American political prisoner Valentin Arregui in 1985's Kiss of the Spider Woman, he received a Golden Globe Award nomination. In 1989, he played the lead role in Romero, the true story of the assassinated Salvadoran Archbishop and political activist Oscar Arnulfo Romero. Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times in 1989, film critic Roger Ebert described Julia's Romero as "an interesting one, restrained and considered. His Romero is not a firebrand but a reasonable man who cannot deny the evidence of his eyes and his conscience."

During his lifetime Julia appeared in more than 40 films, among them The Eyes of Laura Mars; Frankenstein Unbound; Presumed Innocent; The Rookie; Street Fighter; and Mack the Knife, in which he reprised his 1976 stage role alongside thespian Richard Harris and The Who singer Roger Daltrey. But it was not until 1991 that he would play his most famous role, as the eccentric patriarch Gomez Addams in the film adaptation of the 1960s television series The Addams Family. Both The Addams Family and its sequel, Addams Family Values, were box-office smashes: The dark, eccentric comedies benefited both from creative screenplays and from exceptional casting (Julia, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd, Christina Ricci). Even though Julia would win three major film-industry awards for his 1994 role in the HBO production The Burning Season: The Chico Mendes Story, he would never eclipse his role as the dark, dashing, and devilish Gomez Addams.

In Art as in Life: Raul Julia, Humanitarian

Julia gave one of his final screen performances as the lead in The Burning Season: The Chico Mendes Story. His character, Chico Mendes, was a martyred South American environmental activist and union leader who was assassinated in 1988 during his fight to keep Brazil's rainforests intact. For Julia, himself a longtime human-and environmental-rights activist, the role of Mendes was an especially beloved one. Together with his wife, the actress Merel Poloway Julia, and their two sons, Raul Sigmund and Benjamin Rafael, Julia contributed both time and money to The Hunger Project, a New York City-based organization dedicated to eradicating world hunger. He told author David Ellis, a longtime friend and the originator of the textbook series Becoming a Master Student, "My commitment to end hunger inspires my acting. When I'm tired disgusted, bored, or just don't feel like it, I remember that the more successful I become, the more of a difference I can make."

Julia also donated his time and his name to other causes, including at-risk-youth mentoring, HIV/AIDS education and prevention, and human rights in Latin America. He was a member of the Latino/Hispanic cultural organizations Hola, Nosotros, Miriam Colon's Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, and the National Council of La Raza. Both Nosotros (founded in 1970 by the actor Ricardo Montalban) and the National Council of La Razas honored Julia with awards for promoting a positive image of Hispanic culture. He was also chair of the Joseph Papp Celebrity Coalition for Racial Harmony, and a board member of the New York Shakespeare Festival, the New York Council for the Humanities, the Breakthrough Foundation, and the National Theatre of the Deaf. In June 1993 the New York Shakespeare Festival presented Julia with the fourth annual Susan Stein Shiva Award for his ongoing work in theater.

Sadly, Julia would not live to accept one of his final, most prestigious film-industry awards: a best-actor Emmy for his role as Chico Mendes. On Monday, October 24, 1994, following complications from a stroke, Julia passed away at North Shore University Hospital on Long Island, New York. News of Julia's death came as a surprise to the actor's fans; Julia had reportedly been battling terminal stomach cancer for more than a year, but he had not gone public with the news of his illness. He received a state funeral, at which thousands of Puerto Rican citizens paid their respects, and was buried alongside seven relatives at an ornate family plot in San Juan.

Accepting for her husband of 28 years at the 1995 Emmy Awards, Merel Poloway Julia said, "I hope that you will always keep him in your heart as I will always keep him in my heart." In a 1995 entertainment column for the Web site Addicted to Noise, critic Michael Goodwin lamented Julia's passing, remarking that the actor was "one of the last great movie stars—as opposed to merely talented film actors like Tom Hanks. [May he] rest in peace."

While video has allowed for the survival of Julia's acting legacy, those who remember the actor's philanthropic work have worked to keep his humanitarian efforts alive. The youth leadership program Earth Train established a home base in the 1,200 acres of Puerto Rican rainforest known as the Raul Julia Mountain Rainforest. In June of 1996, a new elementary school in the Bronx, New York City, was christened the Raul Julia Micro Society Dual Language School; and in May of the same year, a wing of El Nuevo Theatro Puerto Rico was dedicated in Julia's name. In 1994, The Hunger Project established the Raul Julia Ending Hunger Fund, appointing Julia's widow as director in 1999, and presenting the annual Raul Julia Global Citizen Award to actor-humanitarians such as Susan Sarandon (1999), Jeff Bridges (2000), and Edward James Olmos (2001). In 1997, inspired by Julia's work, The Hunger Project expanded its operations into Latin America.

Books

Cruz, Barbara C., Raul Julia: Actor and Humanitarian (Hispanic Biographies), Enslow Publishers, Inc., 1998.

Perez, Frank and Ann Weil, Raul Julia (Contemporary Hispanic Americans), Raintree/Steck-Vaughan, 1996.

Stefoff, Rebecca, Raul Julia (Hispanics of Achievement), Chelsea House, 1994.

Periodicals

Cigar Aficianado, Winter 1993/94.

Elle, November 1987, p. 142.

Online

"Raul Julia Online," http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/4596.

"The Hunger Project—The Raul Julia Ending Hunger Fund," http://www.thp.org/rj.

Puerto Rico Herald,http://www.puertorico-herald.org/issues/vol4n06/ProfileJulia-en.shtml (February 11, 2000). □