Río de Janeiro (Brasil), 1936

By Luiz Felipe Alves de Miranda

Domingos José Soares de Oliveira is an actor, writer, and director of theater, television, and cinema. On stage, he built a career as a director, while on television, he adapted classic texts and created specials and series. In cinema, he began as a director with two films focusing on the typical bon vivant of Rio de Janeiro’s South Zone—Todas as Mulheres do Mundo (1967) and Edu, Coração de Ouro (1968), in which actor Paulo José embodied the director’s alter ego. He directed the comedy As Duas Faces da Moeda (1969) and É Simonal (1970), about the successful singer of the 1960s. His only dramatic film was A Culpa (1971). For television, he directed Vida, Vida (1978).

In 1980, he released the episodic comedy Teu Tua, inspired by texts by Arthur Azevedo, Dostoevsky, and Molière. After a long hiatus, he returned with a series of romantic comedies, made on small budgets and set in Rio’s South Zone, playing one of the main roles in Amores (1998), Separações (2002), Feminices (2004), and Carreiras (2005). In 2008, he directed Juventude and Todo Mundo Tem Problemas Sexuais. In 2011, he released Primeiro Dia de um Ano Qualquer and Paixão e Acaso, followed by Infância in 2014.

In theater, Confissões das Mulheres de 30 was revived in 2008, as well as the autobiographical Do Fundo do Lago Escuro in 2010, in which he played his grandmother. In 2010, he published the book Minha Vida no Teatro; in 2014, he wrote his autobiography Minha Vida; and in 2015, he published the novel Antônio.