Orlando Costa (actor)
Portuguese actor
Orlando de Jesus Machado da Costa (24 December 1948 – 19 August 2022) was a Portuguese actor.
Route
He graduated in Theatre, specializing in Actor Training, from the Lisbon Theatre and Film School in 1971, and made his professional debut at the Cascais Experimental Theatre, under the direction of Carlos Avilez.
In 1973 he was among the founders of the Teatro da Cornucópia, with Luís Miguel Cintra and Jorge Silva Melo. In that company he participated in the plays The Misanthrope by Molière (1973), Terror and Misery in the Third Reich by Bertolt Brecht (1974), The Petty Bourgeois by Maxim Gorky (1975), Auto de Família by Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão (1976), among others.
Besides Cornucópia, he also worked with Hélder Costa and Maria do Céu Guerra, Fernanda Lapa, João Lourenço, Glicínia Quartin, Jorge Listopad or Rui Mendes, interpreting authors such as Arthur Miller, Woody Allen, Valle Inclán, Gil Vicente, Marivaux or Ribeiro Chiado. In 2007 he joined the cast of Shakespeare's "Hamlet", in a production directed by André Gago, which toured the country.
Frequently requested by television, he regularly participated in series, soap operas and television films, having starred in Zé Gato, a series by Rogério Ceitil broadcast by RTP2 from 1979 to 1980.
He also participated in Magic Tales (1985), The Cardboard Suitcase, alongside Irene Papas (1988), The Heiress of the Sugar Cane Fields (1990), Misunderstandings (1995), Police (1996), Ballet Rose by Leonel Vieira (1998), The Life-Snatcher (1999), Captain Roby (2000), Eyes of Water (2001), João Semana (2005), When the Wolves Howl (2006), or Madmen of Laughter.
In cinema, he highlights the films Coisa Ruim by Tiago Guedes and Frederico Serra (2006), A Filha by Solveig Nordlund (2003), A Dupla Viagem by Teresa Garcia (2000), O Anjo da Guarda by Margarida Gil (1999), Sapatos Pretos by João Canijo (1998), Três Irmãos by Teresa Villaverde (1994), Amor e Dedinhos de Pé by Luís Filipe Rocha (1993), Jogo de Mão by Monique Rutler (1984) or A Santa Aliança by Eduardo Geada (1980).
Costa died on August 19, 2022, at his home, at the age of 73.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Orlando Costa (actor)” is portuguese actor. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Orlando, Costa and actor, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “portuguese actor” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10341529. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1948, 2022, 1971 and 1973.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Orlando Costa (actor)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.