Roberto Gomez Bolaños, better commonly known as his famous stage name Chespirito, or “Little Shakespeare”, was a Mexican actor, comedian, screenwriter, director, producer, and author.

Roberto was born on February 21st, 1929 in Mexico City and was primarily raised there his whole life by his mother and father. Growing up he was very into sports such as soccer and boxing, but he wanted to become an engineer and so he went on to studying engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and in 1951 he took up a copywriting job at an advertising agency. In 1968, Chespirito was hired by the Televisión Independiente de Mexico network where he introduced the public to his works “El Chavo del Ocho” (The Kid from the Eighth) released in 1973 and “El Chapulin Colorado” (The Red Grasshopper) released in 1970. Those two shows became extremely popular among children and adults because of their humorous images and the showing of the true value of communities and human connections.

Before he started fully acting, Chespirito also started writing some plays. His stage name “Chespirito” actually came from a producer during his first few years as a writer, this nickname meaning “Little Shakespeare”. Roberto appeared in 20 movies and he also made more than hundreds of stage performances; once, he took the whole cast of “Chespirito” on a tour of stadiums to play all of their famous roles on stage and the show sold out the Santiago stadium, which seated around 80,000 people.

Roberto married Graciela Fernandez in 1968 with whom he had six children with, divorced her in 1989, and then later on went to marry his co-star Florindo Meza in 2004. Chespirito will forever be one of the most creative and funny writers and actors in Latin America.

“La venganza nunca es buena, mata el alma y la envenena,” recited Roberto, playing “El Chavo” in one of the episodes of El Chavo del Ocho. 

(“Revenge is never good, it kills the soul and poisons it.”)