Multi-talented Mexican artist who began as a dancer before turning to acting and eventually writing, directing and producing motion pictures. Arau made his feature directing debut with the Mexican-lensed "The Barefoot Eagle" (1967), before playing what would be the first in a series of somewhat stereotypical characters for Hollywood in Sam Peckinpah's landmark Western "The Wild Bunch" (1969). Subsequently, the thin, handsome and often mustached Arau alternated between acting assignments in the US and producing, directing, writing and starring in his own projects in Mexico. Arau's better known
