Raúl Rafael Juliá y Arcelay [IPA: ra'ul rafa'el xu'lia i aɾse'lai] (better known as simply Raúl Juliá) (March 9, 1940 – October 24, 1994) was a Golden Globe award winning actor from Puerto Rico who lived and worked for many years in the United States. His career spanned stage and screen, and included dramatic, comic, and musical roles in theater, film and television, challenging audiences with his complex, often enthralling performances.

Raúl Rafael Carlos Juliá y Arcelay was born at the Floral Park subsection of San Juan on March 9, 1940. He was the oldest of four brothers and sisters; his brother Carlos Rafael died in an automobile accident in 1960. His mother was a mezzo-soprano who abandoned a potential career as a singer when she married Juliá's father. Some relatives on his father's side were part-time musicians.

Raúl's father was the founder of "La Cueva del Chicken Inn", a restaurant in San Juan which he used as a gate to introduce pizza and fried chicken into the Puerto Rican gastronomy, during the mid-1950s. It was modeled after a similar restaurant in Madrid, Spain, called "La Cueva de Luis Candelas", whose fried chicken 'a la canasta' was legendary. On the other hand, he hired an Italian cook in New York City who could prepare authentic Italian pizza for Puerto Rican palates. Raúl's sister María Eugenia claims that their father was, in a way, the first fast food mogul Puerto Rico ever had, since the relatively simple food fare would ensure prompt service at the restaurant. He founded the restaurant at the very house where Raúl and his brother Rafael were born, the brothers and sisters literally grew at the family business, and the property is still owned by the Juliá family.

Throughout his youth, the success of his father's business ensured excellent schooling for young Raúl and his brothers and sisters. He finished his high school studies at the local Colegio San Ignacio de Loyola and had a strict Jesuit upbringing; future Puerto Rican pro-independence leader Rubén Berríos was a classmate and close friend. After spending a year at Fordham University, and as an indirect consequence of his brother's death, he returned to Puerto Rico and attended the University of Puerto Rico where he was a member of Phi Sigma Alpha and earned a Bachelor in Arts degree.

Juliá discovered acting early in his academic career, beginning with a role in first grade. "From then on, that was it," he told Cigar Aficionado magazine in 1993. "I knew there was something special about the theater for me something beyond the regular reality, something that I could get into and transcend and become something other than myself." He was deeply involved in drama and art clubs in his high school years, and even played the role of Rodrigo in Othello at a local drama production. For a while he was also a game show host and teen program host on Puerto Rican television.

Upon graduation from college, Juliá was faced with a difficult choice between his parents' wishes and his own. They wanted him to remain in Puerto Rico and continue on to law school. They also pointed out that his uncles were the owners of a mental hospital, and that he could have guaranteed success as a doctor. He wanted to pursue an acting career. Finally, like so many aspiring actors, he left for New York City in 1964, asking his parents to only finance the tuition fees of any acting classes he might take, while supporting himself through various odd jobs, including selling fountain pens and serving as a telemarketer. Juliá soon began studying drama with Wynn Handman. He soon found work in off-Broadway theater and at open air performances in New York's Central Park.

In 1966, Juliá began working with theater impresario Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival. He credited his recently developed sales skills and sheer persistence with convincing Papp -after several tries- of allowing him to do Shakespearean roles, which he considered the epitome of acting roles. His Shakespearean roles included Edmund in King Lear in 1973 and the title role of Othello in 1979. Juliá went on to enjoy great success on the musical stage, receiving four Tony Award nominations for his roles in Two Gentlemen of Verona (1972, for which he also won the 1972 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance), Where's Charley? (1975), as Mack the Knife in The Threepenny Opera (1977), and in the Fellini-inspired Nine (1982). He appeared in over a dozen Broadway productions, including the legendary 1973 flop musical Via Galactica.

The stage successes led to his formal film debut in The Organization (1971), in which he starred opposite Sidney Poitier (he had played bit parts in two previous films, Stiletto and The Panic in Needle Park). In the early 1980s, Juliá was invited to join Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope Studios company and appeared in One from the Heart (1982).

In 1971, Juliá also appeared as a regular cast member, Rafael, on the children's TV series Sesame Street. Rafael only appeared on the show during the third season, and then Juliá moved on to other projects.

Although he never became a major film superstar (he was partial towards theater), Juliá had notable dramatic and comic roles in a number of films and made-for-TV movies, including his exceptional performance in the film biography of 20th century Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis in Onassis: The Richest Man in the World in which he co-starred with the late Anthony Quinn. In 1983, he starred in a spectacularly disastrous made-for-TV movie Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, an adaptation of a John Varley short story which would later be mocked on Mystery Science Theater 3000. In 1984, he appeared in the Puerto Rican film, "La Gran Fiesta", directed by Marcos Zurinaga, his small monologue near the end of the film is regarded as the film's turning point. In Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), he played a passionate political prisoner (he lost considerable weight to make the role credible), and in Romero (1989) he played the Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero (his research for doing the film demanded that he concelebrate a Roman Catholic mass along with the two priests that served as advisors to the film's production). One of his most memorable roles came as the defense attourney of Harrison Ford in "Presumed Innocent".

In the first two popular Addams Family films, Juliá played Gomez Addams, which drove him into superstar status. He later stated that getting recognized by kids as Gomez Addams always brought a smile to his face, especially towards the end of his life. He also noted the fact that his earlier recollections of the role were those from the Spanish-dubbed version of the first television series (starring John Astin in the role of Gomez, which was named "Homero" in the Spanish version), and as such, he could not draw much from them; he had to adapt the role directly from the original Charles Addams cartoons.

Raul met his wife Merel Poloway when they were both touring for a show called "Llya, Darling." They were married in 1976. In 1983, they had their first son Raul Sigmund Julia. In 1987, they had their second son Benjamin Rafael Julia.

Raul Juliá was a life long supporter of Puerto Rico's independence movement. He had to convince his agent to allow him to do an advertising campaign on behalf of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company, out of his love of the country.

Juliá's favorite actor was Laurence Olivier; he was also a fan of William Shakespeare, Federico García Lorca, and particularly of Don Quixote, whom he portrayed onstage in the 1992 revival of Man of La Mancha. He was also a fan of opera, and while not classically trained, he would sing operatic arias when asked to.

He was a member of Phi Sigma Alpha fraternity.

Juliá was also very much involved in the "End The Hunger Project", which attempted to minimize world hunger through philantropic galas; he had a personal goal of raising USD$1 million for the organization. He gave numerous anonymous donations to various organizations in Asia, Africa and Latin America, including seed money for erecting a Roman Catholic church in Mexico.

In 1991, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer, but he continued to perform. Illness began to take its toll on Juliá in 1993, while creating one of his most memorable roles as Brazilian rainforest activist Chico Mendes in The Burning Season (1994), for which he posthumously won a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award. He also starred in the videogame-inspired film Street Fighter as the villainous M. Bison, for whom he used an English accent.

It is also known that Julia was to reprise his role as M. Bison in the video game version of the Street Fighter film. Unfortunately, although he did meet with the game's staff, he was already very ill and, in the end, couldn't participate in the project. The movie's ending credits nevertheless started with the words "FOR RAUL. Vaya Con Dios" (Spanish, lit. "Go with God").

On October 16, 1994, Juliá suffered a stroke in his New York City apartment and fell into a coma. He died eight days later, at the age of 54.

Juliá's body was flown back to Puerto Rico, where he was given a state funeral attended by thousands. He was survived by his wife and his two sons.

Film critic Leonard Maltin said of him: "Droopy-eyed, dark, and suavely handsome, this extremely versatile actor was one of the most respected stage performers of his generation."

Actress Sandra Bullock was presented with the 2002 Raul Julia Award for Excellence, in her efforts, as the executive producer of ABC’s hit sitcom The George Lopez Show in helping to expand career openings for Hispanic talent in media and entertainment fields. America's tenor Daniel Rodriguez, was honored for his charitable work, receiving the first Raul Julia Award, from the Puerto Rican Family Institute in 2003.