Ney Latorraca loved appearing in the newspaper and spent hours on the phone with friends

When there was a cultural event in Rio —film or theater awards, mainly—, it was almost certain that Ney Latorraca would be one of the first people to arrive. “That way the photographers take me calmly, take good photos. There’s no rush”, he once explained.

Ney liked to see his photo printed in the newspaper and magazines. Analog (ma non troppo), he also liked articles on websites, but it was on paper that he really liked to appear. Often, he would send photo options via WhatsApp that he thought were good to help illustrate a future report.

WhatsApp was a means of communication that the actor, who died at the age of 80, this Thursday morning (26), from pulmonary sepsis, used frequently. Emojis, many emojis accompanied his messages (he used his hands a lot in prayer). But talking on the phone, landline or cell phone… That was a serious matter.

“I love a telephone. I like hearing people’s voices. Every day before going to sleep I write down the names of three friends so I can call them the next day. I recently spoke to Miguel Falabella, Maria Padilha, Marcos Nanini, Fernanda Montenegro… They answer and I say: ‘I called to say I miss you…’. Everyone likes that”, he said, during the hardest period of confinement due to the pandemic.

Isolation in his apartment, in Lagoa, south of Rio (which he left in his will to be donated to a charity) forced him to suspend his daily walks around the reflecting pool, one of the city’s postcards. Ney was there a lot. For pleasure, to take care of your health, and also to find the group of capybaras that live in the area. “They’re my friends,” she said, often showing recent photos of some of them.

During the pandemic, he stayed at home — and even then, always wearing a mask. He spent his days watching volleyball and football games on TV, calling friends and walking around to exercise. Every now and then, I took a dip in the pool. “I’m at risk, my love. I stay here in my apartment in peace”, he says.

In order not to sit still for nothing, I took five thousand steps every day inside the house. He used a cell phone app to count and concluded that it was the equivalent of a 3.5 kilometer walk. “Which is half a lap around the Lagoon”, he concluded.

Politically, he said he raised some flags and was proud of them. But not all. He was present in the artists’ uprising for Diretas, he made transgressive pieces by Plinio Marcos during the dictatorship, but… “I campaigned for Aécio, right?”, he pondered.

“I went to Belo Horizonte and visited a cultural space created by his sister, I was enchanted. I saw that and thought: ‘These people are wonderful, serious’. Then those bombs came. Think about how I was. But I don’t have the gift of guess. I regret raising this flag. I was also part of “Morobloco” (a group of artists that publicly supported the then judge Sérgio Moro, at the time of Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment). I regretted it again. But I’ve always been a toucan.”