Raúl Rafael Carlos Juliá y Arcelay (March 9, 1940 – October 24, 1994) was a Puerto Rican actor and humanitarian. He was best known for his intense and varied roles on stage and screen. He started his career in the Public Theater before transitioning to film. He received numerous accolades including a Drama Desk Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and nominations for four Tony Awards. In 2017, The Daily Telegraph named him one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.
Born in San Juan, Julia took an interest in acting while in school and pursued the career upon completion of his studies. After performing locally for some time, he was convinced by actor and entertainment personality Orson Bean to move to New York City. Julia, who had been bilingual since childhood, soon gained interest in Broadway and off-Broadway plays. He performed in mobile projects, including the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater. Julia was eventually noticed by producer Joseph Papp, who offered him work in the New York Shakespeare Festival.
In 1978, Julia starred alongside Meryl Streep in a revival of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew at the Delacorte Theater. He received four Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical nominations for Two Gentlemen of Verona (1972), Where's Charley? (1975), The Threepenny Opera (1977), and Nine (1982). Julia starred in the original Broadway production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal (1979). He also starred in revivals of Design for Living (1984), Othello (1991), and his final Broadway role Man of La Mancha (1994).
Julia gained prominence for his role as Gomez Addams in two film adaptations of The Addams Family. He received Golden Globe Award nominations for Tempest (1982), Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), and Moon Over Parador (1988). He is also known for his film roles in The Panic in Needle Park (1971), One from the Heart (1982), The Morning After (1986), Romero (1989), Presumed Innocent (1990) and Street Fighter (1994). In 1994, Julia suffered several health afflictions, eventually dying after suffering a stroke. For his work in The Burning Season, he was posthumously awarded a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries, or Television Film.
Julia was born March 9, 1940, in Floral Park (Hato Rey), a suburb of San Juan, to Raúl Juliá Sr., an electrical engineer who graduated from Trine University, and Olga Arcelay, a mezzo-soprano who sang in a church choir. He was the oldest of four brothers alongside sisters Maria Eugenia Juliá and Olga Maria Juliá. When Julia was 19 years old, his brother Rafa died in a car accident. Some relatives were also musicians, including his great-aunt María González, whom he credited as the inspiration behind his artistic career. The family was Catholic. His direct paternal line goes back to his great-great-grandfather, Francisco Julià Brell, from Barcelona, Spain, who settled in Manati, Puerto Rico, in 1834.
Raúl Juliá Sr. was the founder of La Cueva del Chicken Inn, a restaurant in San Juan. The building was originally a gas station and auto body shop before being remodeled after a similar restaurant in Madrid, Spain, called Las Cuevas de Luis Candelas, which is intended to mimic the structure of a gypsum cave. He claimed that he had brought pizza to Puerto Rico after hiring an Italian cook in New York City who could prepare pizza. The restaurant is also supposed to be the first to distribute chicken-in-a-basket in the archipelago, which Miriam Fitts helped him develop.
Julia was enrolled in the Colegio Espíritu Santo in Hato Rey, a Catholic private school, where most of the personnel spoke exclusively English. There, he participated in his first play in first grade, interpreting the devil, with his performance earning him participation in all subsequent school plays. After witnessing Errol Flynn's performance in The Adventures of Robin Hood, he decided to pursue an acting career.
During his childhood, Julia's family followed a strict Jesuit practice, often taking homeless children into their household. His mother received recognition from the Catholic University of Ponce for these efforts.
By the seventh grade, Julia was able to speak English fluently and had gained interest in the works of William Shakespeare. Julia concluded his secondary education at Colegio San Ignacio de Loyola, where he would organize plays of Julius Caesar, Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest. Seeking to please his parents, he continued his education with a year at Fordham University, the well-known private Jesuit university in New York City, before returning home to enroll at the University of Puerto Rico, where, just like his father, he joined Phi Sigma Alpha fraternity.
Julia continued acting in local plays and nightclubs as he earned a bachelor of arts degree. Julia eventually realized that he had no interest in pursuing the law career favored by his parents, choosing to act full-time despite having doubts that he could sustain himself working as an actor. His parents did not support this decision.
Julia began performing in several plays that were held in San Juan, debuting in La Vida es un Sueño. He performed in a restaging of Macbeth, which was held in one of the municipality's colonial castles in order to simulate the setting of the work. Other works included playing the role of Roderigo in Othello at a local drama production. Parallel to this, Julia began making presentations at the Ted Mack Amateur Hour. After joining a musical group named the Lamplighters, despite receiving opposition from his parents, he was recruited by Lillian Hurst to perform alongside her, eventually receiving work at a hotel named El Convento.
During this time, he began considering the possibility of moving to Europe to take acting classes. During one of their acts, Julia was approached by Orson Bean, who was on vacation in Puerto Rico and provided him with contact information, wanting him to travel to New York and work there. His parents were shocked by the proposal, but ultimately agreed to support his decision. Julia's departure was postponed after his younger brother, Rafael, died in a traffic collision. During this time, he became engaged to Magda Vasallo Molinelli.
In 1964, when he was 24 years old, he traveled to New York City, arriving in the middle of a winter storm. After establishing residence in Manhattan, Julia worked at a variety of odd jobs to pay his expenses, going so far as to attend sales training (provided by a distributor) in the proper way to sell pens. When Hurst visited him, they attended a Broadway play, which prompted a discovery that surprised him—that it was possible to work as an actor full-time. As a result, Julia began seeking employment in both Broadway and Off-Broadway plays. Seeking to further improve his acting, he took lessons from Wynn Handman, who was recommended by Bean; his class included future fellow star Christopher Walken.
His first work was in a production of Pedro Calderón de la Barca's Life Is a Dream, wherein he played Astolfo, thereby making himself eligible to receive his Actors Equity card from Actors' Equity Association. Initially, Julia received an allowance from his parents, but after hiring manager Jeff Hunter, he landed a role in a production of Bye Bye Birdie, thereafter declining further financial assistance. He began performing with Phoebe Brand's mobile theatre, presenting plays in low-income neighborhoods of New York. This wasn't always easy and the group was frequently attacked with cans and other items, including one incident in which a pillow was lit on fire and thrown their way. In 1965, he married Vasallo Molinelli.
In 1966, Julia was cast in the role of Macduff in a Spanish-language version of Macbeth, and also performed in The Ox Cart (La Carreta), a stage play written by Puerto Rican playwright René Marqués. Míriam Colón Valle, who also participated in La Carreta, established the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, where he performed. In 1967, the founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival (NYSF), Joseph Papp, attended a performance at Delacorte Theater, where Julia was reading patriotic Puerto Rican poetry. Subsequently, Papp offered him the role of Demetrius in a staging of Titus Andronicus. After this play concluded, he contacted Papp who offered him the job of stage manager in NYSF's Hamlet. While performing this task, Julia also performed in some of the plays.