Mircea Diaconu

Mircea Diaconu
Official portrait, 2014
Minister of Culture
In office 7 May 2012 – 25 June 2012
Prime Minister	Victor Ponta
Preceded by	Hunor Kelemen
Succeeded by	Puiu Hașotti
Member of the European Parliament for Romania
In office 1 July 2014 – 2 July 2019
Personal details
Born	(1949-12-24)24 December 1949 Vlădești, Argeș County, Romania
Died	14 December 2024(2024-12-14) (aged 74) Bucharest, Romania
Political party	Independent (from 2014)
Other political affiliations	National Liberal Party (2008–2014)
Spouse	Diana Lupescu ​ ​ (m. 1980)​
Children	2
Alma mater	I.L. Caragiale Institute of Theatre and Film Arts (IATC)
Occupation	Actor, writer, politician
Awards	National Order of Merit, Officer rank

Mircea Diaconu (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈmirtʃe̯a diˈakonu]; 24 December 1949 – 14 December 2024) was a Romanian actor, writer and politician. First appearing on stage in 1970, and on screen two years later, Diaconu pursued a lengthy career in both formats, working with a series of prominent directors. He acted in some sixty films through the 2000s, and continued to act in theatre during the ensuing decade. He took part in the Romanian Revolution of 1989. In 2008, he entered electoral politics, becoming a senator, and subsequently serving a term as a Member of the European Parliament. In 2019, he ran for president, placing fourth.

Biography

Acting, writing, Revolution

Born in Vlădești, Argeș County, he graduated high school in Câmpulung in 1967 and Bucharest's I.L. Caragiale Institute of Theatre and Film Arts in 1971. He was obliged to join the Romanian Communist Party during his second year of university, due to the high grades he had achieved. In 1980, he married Diana Lupescu, herself an actress; the couple had two children.

Diaconu made his theatrical debut a year before finishing university, at the Bulandra Theater, in Truman Capote's The Grass Harp. His screen debut came in Dan Pița's Stone Wedding (1972); he would later appear in the same director's Philip the Good (1975). Other directors with whom he worked include Alexandru Tatos (Red Apples, 1975; Sequences, 1982; and The Secret of the Secret Weapon, 1988), Virgil Calotescu (Bucharest Identity Card, 1982; and Repeated Wedding, 1985), Nae Caranfil (Asfalt Tango, 1996; and Filantropica, 2002) and Cătălin Mitulescu (The Way I Spent the End of the World, 2006). In all, he appeared in more than sixty films.

Diaconu worked with Lucian Pintilie both in film (the 1981 De ce trag clopotele, Mitică?) and in theater: Gogol's The Government Inspector at Bulandra, and Shakespeare's As You Like It at the Nottara Theater. Liviu Ciulei hired him at Bulandra in 1972, and he remained there for a decade, before moving on to Nottara. At Bulandra, he appeared in Twelfth Night and The Tempest, both under Ciulei's direction; and in Marin Sorescu's Răceala, directed by Dan Micu. At Nottara, he appeared in Alexander Ostrovsky's The Forest; Ultimul bal, after Liviu Rebreanu's Forest of the Hanged; and Mihai Ispirescu's Într-o dimineață. He became the director of Nottara Theater in 2004, working as such until his resignation in 2011.

Diaconu addressing a crowd during the Romanian Revolution in 1989

A participant in the Romanian Revolution, he was rehearsing a play at Nottara when Nicolae Ceaușescu's final speech began on 21 December 1989. During the day, he and his colleagues organized students to go to area factories and urge workers to declare an immediate strike. He spent the night outdoors with students, believing that, although the uprising lacked familiar leaders who could be trusted, the crowd at least recognized popular actors' faces. During the night, Securitate secret police fired through apartment windows, while the next morning, Diaconu saw that agents had quietly killed people with brass knuckles. However, he soon noticed that a revolution was in full swing, the boulevards leading to the city center packed with advancing workers who had trapped two tanks, one of which he rode to the Central Committee building from which Ceaușescu had spoken the previous day. Later, he was among several figures to appear before a microphone in Palace Square. Addressing a throng chanting anti-Ceaușescu slogans, he repeated an appeal for calm. The following year, he was a founding member of the Civic Alliance Foundation.

In 1990, he became the country's first actor to resign his contract with a theater and become a freelancer. Other theaters with which he appeared include Theatrum Mundi and the National Theatre Bucharest. He taught acting at his alma mater between 1977 and 1978, and again from 1991 to 1998. He wrote three books that appeared under the Communist regime. The first, Șugubina (1977), is a volume of short stories. The second, La noi, când vine iarna, was initially published as a children's book in 1980 and was republished as a novel for adults in 2013. The third, Scaunul de pânză al actorului (1985), includes sketches about the theatrical world. In 2000, then-President Emil Constantinescu awarded him the National Order of Merit, Officer rank.

Politics

Diaconu as Culture Minister in 2012

Diaconu as a Member of the European Parliament in 2016

Diaconu began his political career in 2008, when he was elected to the Senate for Argeș County as a member of the National Liberal Party (PNL). While there, he served on the culture committee; his term expired at the following election. In May 2012, he was named Culture Minister in the new Victor Ponta cabinet, but was forced out of office the following month when the High Court of Cassation and Justice ruled there was a conflict of interest between his ministerial position and his managerial role at the theater. The same year, he was the subject of an investigation by prosecutors for having helped hire his wife as a director at Nottara Theatre in 2007, despite the fact that she did not meet the necessary qualifications.

In March 2014, when the PNL failed to include him on its list of candidates for that year's European Parliament election, Diaconu decided to run as an independent. Although his candidacy was initially rejected by the electoral authorities because the 2012 court decision had found him ineligible for political office, an appeals court placed him on the ballot, finding that he could in fact run for other offices than the one involved in the older case (that is, Senator). During the campaign, he built up the image of an independent persecuted by bureaucratic institutions determined to keep him out of office, benefiting from favorable media coverage. He won some 380,000 votes or 6.8% of the national total (ahead of two political parties that won seats), assuring him a term as an MEP. As an independent, he was only required to win 3.1% of the vote in order to secure a seat; he obtained double digits in the counties of Constanța (13.3%) and Botoșani (10.4%). He is thought to have significantly eroded the PNL vote, with one party member, Nicolae Robu, claiming Diaconu cut its performance by nearly half. In the 2014–2019 legislature of the European Parliament, he sat with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group, and was vice president of the Culture Committee.

In August 2019, Diaconu entered the presidential race as an independent. Subsequently, ALDE and PRO Romania formed an electoral alliance in support of Diaconu, called "Un Om" ("one man" or "a human being"). His proposals included expanding the Cernavodă Nuclear Power Plant and salvaging the Rovinari Power Station; building and revitalizing Danube River ports and bridges, using European Union funds; unifying small landholdings into larger, more profitable farms; and a stricter approach to school discipline, such as banning mobile phones and reintroducing uniforms. On foreign policy, he called for Romania to play a stronger role within the EU and NATO, while reaffirming the country's alliance with the United States. His policies seemingly courted a rural electorate and recalled those of the 1990s and early 2000s, when Ion Iliescu was president. Diaconu finished in fourth place, with nearly 9% of the vote.

Death

Diaconu died from colon cancer at the Institutul Clinic Fundeni, in Bucharest, on 14 December 2024. He was 74.

Electoral history

European elections

Election	Votes	Percentage	MEPs	Position	Political group
2014	379,582	6.81%	1 / 32	4th	Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE)

Presidential elections

Election	Affiliation	First round			Second round
		Votes	Percentage	Position	Votes	Percentage	Position
2019	"One Man" Alliance	815,201	8.85%	4th

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Director
1972	Stone Wedding	The Deserter	Dan Pița and Mircea Veroiu
1975	Philip the Good	Filip	Dan Pița
	Red Apples	Mitică Irod	Alexandru Tatos
	The Actor and the Savages	Commissioner Radu Toma	Manole Marcus
1978	The Prophet, the Gold and the Transylvanians	Romulus Brad	Dan Pița
	The Actress, the Dollars and the Transylvanians		Mircea Veroiu
1981	The Oil, the Baby and the Transylvanians		Dan Pița
	Carnival Scenes	Iordache	Lucian Pintilie
1982	Sequences	The Motel Keeper	Alexandru Tatos
	Bucharest Identity Card	Radu Petrescu	Virgil Calotescu
1985	Repeated Wedding
1988	The Secret of the Secret Weapon	Zmeul Zmeilor	Alexandru Tatos
1996	Asphalt Tango	Andrei	Nae Caranfil
2002	Philanthropy	Ovidiu Gorea
2006	Love Sick	Mr. Dragnea	Tudor Giurgiu
	The Way I Spent the End of the World	Grigore Matei	Cătălin Mitulescu
2007	The Bastards	The Presidential Counsellor	Șerban Marinescu
2009	Kino Caravan	Tanasie	Titus Muntean

Books

• Șugubina (1977), Editura Albatros
• La noi, când vine iarna (1980), Editura Ion Creangă; 2013, Editura Polirom
• Scaunul de pânză al actorului (1985), Editura Meridiane

External links

• Mircea Diaconu at IMDb
• European Parliament profile
• Mircea Diaconu discography at Discogs