Portuguese Stage Actor Who Lived in a Tent

José Lopes was a Portuguese actor born in 1958. He started acting young, with stage roles in plays such as Os Negros, Vida e Morte de Bamba and Epopeia de Gilgamesh. He also appeared in independent films, among them Adeus Lisboa, Interrogatório and Longe, and he worked as a teacher at the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema in Lisbon alongside the actor and director Luís Miguel Cintra.

According to Observador, his acting career later gave way to long unemployment and precarious work, and he lived in poverty. His friend António Alves Fernandes said that he began sleeping in a tent after social security cut his minimum income support. The friend also pointed to other difficulties in his life, including a hard divorce, a long period without a job, illness and artistic work that went unrecognised.

He was living in the tent on the outskirts of Sintra, near a railway station. In December 2019 he was found dead there, at the age of 61. Mr Fernandes announced the news on Facebook. The writer Rui Zink said that a friend found him in his shelter a couple of days after he had died. The report says that the day and time of death are not known and that the cause was not established.

After his death, the actress Ângela Pinto started a fundraising campaign to pay for the funeral, which was scheduled for the following Thursday in Mouraria, a neighbourhood of Lisbon.

His story is one of a theatre and film professional and teacher who, after decades in the arts, was left without work or income support and ended his life in a tent, remembered by colleagues and friends who came together to give him a funeral.