Actor makes a career playing Mexico’s ‘Mean Gringo’ [archived newspaper article]

 

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

By Matt Moffett and Jose De Cordoba

March 19, 2003

MEXICO CITY – Roger Cudney, a smallish, 66-year-old with a receding hairline and a gleaming smile, may be the most notorious gringo in Mexico. Some Mexicans know him as a plunderer of ancient archeological treasure. Others remember him as the union-busting manager of a sweatshop. Still others recognize Cudney as a pathologically nasty Texas Ranger or a meddling diplomat.

     Cudney has been all these things and more in a 30-year acting career in Mexican TV and movies. The Ohio born Cudney came to Mexico in the 1960s to play the lead in the musical Showboat, but he soon found a different dramatic calling. “Roger Cudney is the epitome of the bad gringo, a blending of all the worst American stereotypes,” says David Wilt, who compiled the Biographical Dictionary of Mexican Film Performers.

     On the recent Mexican soap opera, Amigas y Rivales (Friends and Rivals), Cudney was a racist South Texas rancher who caught a couple of illegal Mexican immigrants trespassing on his property, shortly after the World Trade Center attack. “Git off my land,” the actor snarled, waving a shotgun. Then, in his distinctively accented Spanish, he ad-libbed: “Thousands of Americans have just died in New York. They shouldn’t let anyone enter my country anymore.”

On the late show or on home video, you can catch Cudney playing a sadistic American prison warden in Con Odio en la Piel (With Hate in the Skin) or a blood thirsty intelligence operative in Bano de Sangre (Blood Bath).

     He also shows up on commercials. Not long ago, in a TV ad campaign for the Mexican soft drink Aga. Cudney appeared as a scowling border patrolman.

     But a swig of Aga apple drink worked a wondrous transformation. “Welcome to my country,” now a smiling Cudney said to a Mexican immigrant, as he installed the Mexican in the front seat of his truck and helped him with his bags. The soft drink is so good, the voice-over says, “Hasta lo mas malo lo hace bueno.” That is: Even the worst are made good.

     After about 50 films and TV roles in Mexico, Cudney specialized in playing nasty caricatures of Americans, which is no glamour job. “You’re almost always a bad guy, you never get the girl, and you usually die in the end,” says Cudney, who has been married to a Mexican for more than 30-years and is as affable off-screen as he is evil on it. Working in Mexico’s precarious film industry hasn’t earned Cudney enormous riches, but between acting jobs, voice-over work and singing gigs, he lives quite comfortably.

     Cudney says many Mexicans he meets on the street seek his autograph or joking greet him as “Mr. Green,” one his most over-the-top screen villains. Not all Mexicans are able to separate the actor from the roles he plays. More than once, gas station attendants have recognized Cudney and indignantly refused to service his car.