| Leila Roque Diniz | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 25, 1945 Niterói, Brazil |
| Died | June 14, 1972 New Delhi, India |
| Nationality | Brazilian |
| Occupation | Actress |
Leila Diniz was a Brazilian television, movie and theatre actress. She died young, at the peak of fame, in an air accident in New Delhi, India. Her liberal ideas and attitudes about sex had raised the discontent of both the feminists and the Brazilian military government of the 1960s.[1]
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Born in a communist middle-class family ,[2] Leila worked as a teacher at age 15. At age 17, she met the movie director Domingos de Oliveira, with whom she lived until age 21. Between 1962 and 1964 she had minor roles on stage.
In 1965, Leila started working in television, where made several telenovelas (12 in total), and various commercials. In 1967, she also started to make movies (14 in total).
In 1969, she gave an interview to the satirical newspaper O Pasquim in which, among other things, said: "It's possible to love one person and go to bed with another. It happened to me".[3] The article provoked anger to the military , and Alfredo Buzaid, Minister of Justice of president Emílio Garrastazu Médici's government, has decreed censorship to all newspapers and magazines in Brazil. The law was known as "Leila Diniz decree" [4]
Leila had her contract terminated with TV Globo, with the excuse of 'moral problems", but in 1970 she was contracted as juror at the show of TV host Flávio Cavalcanti, at TV Tupi (Cavalcanti, curiously, was a "right-wing" man).
In 1971, Leila had a short participation as a burlesque star (theatral genre in decline) and she married the movie director Ruy Guerra, father of her only daughter, Janaína. Once more, she offended the conservative society going to the beach in bikini, with eight months of pregnancy.
In 1972,coming back from a movie festival in Australia, where she won a Best Actress award by the movie «Mãos Vazias», Leila died in the Japan Airlines Flight 471 air crash, in India.