María Eugenia Llamas

María Eugenia Llamas
Llamas, Pedro Infante, and Sara García
Born	María Eugenia Llamas Andresco 19 February 1944 Mexico City, Mexico
Died	August 31, 2014(2014-08-31) (aged 70) Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico
Other names	La Tucita
Occupation	Acting; onstage story telling
Years active	1948-2007
Spouse(s)	Rómulo Lozano (m. 1966; d. 1996)
Children	3

María Eugenia Llamas Andresco (19 February 1944 – 31 August 2014) was a Mexican actress best known for her roles as "La Tucita" in the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the late 1940s and in the 1950s. She began appearing in these films in 1948 at the age of four. She was the winner of the Mexican equivalent of the Oscar, the Premio Ariel. While she appeared in many movies after her childhood, she is less known for them. However, she remained popular for her radio and television appearances, for her on-stage story telling talent, and as a live theater actress, and was the 2007 recipient of the Diploma Medalla al Mérito (Medal of Merit) award from the Spanish American Itinerate Academy of Itinerate Oral Narration.

Llamas was born in 1944 in Mexico City. There is little published about her parents. Her father, José Maria Llamas Olaran, was Basque, and hailed from the Rioja region in Spain. Her mother, María Dolores Andresco Kuraitis, was born in Paris, France, to a Ukrainian Jewish father and a Lithuanian Roman Catholic mother. They immigrated to Mexico from Spain in 1939 as refugees from the Spanish Civil War and remained advocates of the lost Republican side of that war.

María Eugenia Llamas made her film debut in 1948 during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in memorable child roles. Llamas was selected for her screen debut when she was only three, at which age first met Pedro Infante, who is still known among his many fans as "The Idol (El Idolo)". When Llamas was only four years old, she co-starred with him as "La Tucita" in the 1948 classic film Los Tres Huastecos (The Three Men from Huasteca). In LLamas' screen debut, her feisty acting style stole scene after scene from no less than the "idol", Pedro Infante himself.

Her next movie role, also as Tucita, was in the 1949 classic film Dicen que Soy un Mujeriego (They Say I am a Womanizer). In this film, Llamas co-starred again with Infante. In this comedy, Pedro Infante plays the philandering grandson of "Doña Rosa", a prominent rancher. Doña Rosa is constantly trying to get her grandson to behave properly – without success.

María Eugenia Llamas was nominated for the Premio Ariel Mexicano (the Mexican equivalent of the Oscar) for her role, but did not win. María Eugenia Llamas did finally win the Ariel Award in 1952 for her role in the 1950 film, Los Niños Miran al Cielo (The Children Look to Heaven). Llamas went on to make many more movies, both as a child and as an adult.