RIP Roberto Maya

 

Actor, voice actor and host Roberto Maya dies at the age of 91

Artist participated in emblematic pornochanchadas, voiced Disney villain and was host of important journalistic program of the 1990s

Globo

10/29/2026

 

He died on the afternoon of last Tuesday (27), at the age of 91, the actor, voice actor and presenter Roberto Maya, at the age of 91, due to a respiratory failure. According to the broadcaster EPTV, Maya was taken by ambulance to the Hospital Beneficência Portuguesa, in Campinas, where he lived, but could not resist.

Roberto Maya was a veteran of the communication and the arts, having acted on several fronts on radio, television and film. He began his career as an actor in radio soap operas in the 1950s. As a voice actor, one of his most remembered works was the tiger Shere Khan, villain of the 1967 animated "Mogli - The Wolf Boy". He also made some TV brochures, such as 1968's "Simply Maria," and 1982's "Happy Final." And it was quite marked by participation in emblematic films of pornochanchada, such as "The Night of the Immorals" (1979), "The Boys of the Hard Easy Life" (1980) and "Eros, the God of Love" (1981).

Maya was very friends with Hugo Carvana, Miele and Daniel Filho, with whom she shared unpublishable experiences. The quartet shared an apartment on the third floor of the No. 410 building of Bartolomeu Mitre Street in Leblon, which served as inspiration for the 2008 film "The House of Mother Joan" in which he also acted.

Another important chapter of Roberto Maya's career was to present the "Special Document", a journalistic program remembered by the investigative reports that was almost a decade on the air, shown between 1989 and 1998, first by Manchete, and then by SBT and the Band.

“That show was a post-dictatorship documentary seed on television. Today, I don’t know if I would have the chest to face the bars that (Nelson, documentarian and creator of the program) Hoineff and I would top at the time. We made the interpretation of the issue freedom of expression that existed in the 1988 Constitution, said the artist to GLOBO, in an interview published in 2008.

Then he gave a period of few works in the 1990s, he returned to perform frequently from the 2000s. He made novels such as "Tropical paradise" (2007) and "Prohibited desire" (2008), in addition to the series "Lara com Z", 2011. His last work was in the 2016 film "Women in Power." Roberto Maya was a widower of Flora, with whom he was married for five decades, and had no children.

MAYA, Roberto

Born: 1/5/1935, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

Died: 10/27/2026, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

 

Roberto Mayo’s western – actor:

Jerônimo, o Herói do Sertão (TV) – 1972-1973 (Ventura)