Robert Rey - Early Life

Early Life

Roberto Miguel Rey Júnior was born in São Paulo, Brazil, to Avelina Reisdörfer and engineer Roberto Miguel Rey, an American-born naturalized Brazilian. The family lived in São Paulo until 1974, when Rey, then 12 years old, and his brother and two sisters came to the United States. Rey and his siblings moved to Utah, where they were adopted by a Mormon religious community. They later moved to Arizona. At sixteen he met with his mother again and they went to live in Prescott, Arizona where he attended Prescott High School. She worked as a janitor to help with Robert’s schooling bills.

Explaining his and his mother's estrangement from his father, Dr. Rey has explained that his father was an abusive alcoholic and womanizer, saying, "Meu pai era um monstro, e minha mãe não tinha voz. Estava contentíssimo de sair daquilo." (My father was a monster, and my mother did not have a voice. I was very happy to leave that.) Rey referred to his father as a "total asshole, a womanizer and a drunk.".

He became a member of the Screen Actors Guild in 1980 and has appeared in national television advertisements, most recently in a Carl's Jr. commercial in which he advises a chicken to undergo breast augmentation surgery. Rey was the medical consultant on the American film Se7en, and also made a cameo appearance in the Bollywood movie, Americanizing Shelley. He is also an avid martial artist with black belt in Taekwondo and Blue Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.