José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón (January 8, 1912 – January 26, 1992), best known as José Ferrer, was a Puerto Rican actor, theatre and film director. He was the first Puerto Rican actor, as well as the first Hispanic actor, to win an Academy Award (in 1950 for Cyrano de Bergerac).
To honor his roots, he donated his Oscar award to the University of Puerto Rico. The prolific and distinguished thespian also won several Tony Awards. In 1947, he won the Tony Award for his theatrical performance of Cyrano de Bergerac, and then in 1952, he won the Distinguished Dramatic Actor Award for The Shrike, and also the Outstanding Director Award for directing all three of The Shrike, The Fourposter, and Stalag 17.
Ferrer’s contributions to American theatre were recognized in 1981, when he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. In 1985 he received the National Medal of Arts from Ronald Reagan, becoming the first actor to receive that honor. On April 26, 2012, the United States Postal Service issued a stamp in Ferrer’s honor in its Distinguished Americans series.
Ferrer was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the son of María Providencia Cintrón, who was from the small mountain town of Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, and Rafael Ferrer, an attorney and writer from San Juan. He was the grandson of Gabriel Ferrer Hernandez, a doctor and advocate of Puerto Rican independence from Spain. He studied at the Swiss boarding school Institut Le Rosey. In 1933, Ferrer completed his bachelor’s degree at Princeton University, where he wrote his senior thesis on “French Naturalism and Pardo Bazán”. Ferrer was also a member of the Princeton Triangle Club.
