Aracy Balabanian (Armenian: Արասի Բալաբանյան; 22 February 1940 – 7 August 2023) was a Brazilian actress.
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Biography
Aracy Balabanian was born in Campo Grande, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, to Armenian immigrants Raphael and Esther Balabanyan, who fled Nor Hachn and settled in Brazil after surviving the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks.
Her parents originally wanted to name her Arax (Արաքս), after the river, but ultimately decided to honor their new homeland instead. Aracy is a Brazilian name of Tupi origin meaning "daybreak" or, literally, "mother of the day."
At the age of fifteen, she moved to São Paulo with her parents and helped raise her seven younger brothers. She passed the entrance exam for Social Sciences and for the Escola de Arte Dramática, coming to abandon the studies of Sociology, another entrance exam that she had taken and had been accepted, to devote herself to the theater. She said that she lived in a time when it was considered ugly for a woman to do theater since women were formerly educated to be housewives and obey their husbands.
