Totia Meireles

Maria Elvira Meireles (born 11 October 1958), better known as Totia Meireles, is a Brazilian actress. She is known for her various performances on telenovelas, film, and in theatre. She has earned awards for her performances in América, Gypsy, and Salve Jorge.

Biography
Meireles was born in 1958 in Rio de Janeiro. Totia has been her nickname since her childhood, and uses it more than her birthname. Despite being from Rio de Janeiro, she was raised in Cuiabá. She is one of eight children to Zulmira Meireles and José Mauro Meirelles, who came from Conselheiro Lafaiete, Minas Gerais. José was a colonel in the military, who served as a commander in the 9th Battalion of Construction Engineering, based in Cuiabá, which had the objective of building highway BR-163, from Cuiabá to Santarém in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. Colonel Meireles, who for his contributions to the construction project became known as the "Pai da Cuiabá-Santarém", was also the vice-mayor of Cuiabá beginning in 1992, during the Dante de Oliveira government, and became mayor in 1994 as Oliveira ran to be the governor of Mato Grosso.

Career
Meireles began her career as a ballet dancer and soon after was discovered as a singer during an audition for a musical Chorus Line, with Cláudia Raia as the protagonist. In 2010, she performed as Mamma Rose in the musical Gypsy, to which her rendition led her to be nominated to the Shell de Teatro Prize.

Beginning in the 1990s, she worked through participations in Rede Globo telenovelas and series, such as with secretary Sonia in Mulheres de Areia (1993); Elaine, during the 1995 season of Malhação and the sexologist Cacilda in O Fim do Mundo (1996); along with Matilde in Suave Veneno (1999), the friend of Inês/Lavínia (Glória Pires).

In 2001/2002, she participated in the telenovela O Clone as Laurinda, the friend of Ivete, played by Vera Fischer, from there beginning at that point a partnership with Glória Perez in her productions. In 2005, she acted as Vera Tupã in América. In the telenovela her character is romantically involved with Jatobá, played by Marcos Frota.

Meireles, in 2006, performed as Silvana Munhoz, a perfume seller in Saara of Arab background, and the aunt of Duda (Daniel de Oliveira), one of the protagonists of the João Emanuel Carneiro telenovela Cobras & Lagartos. From 2007 to 2008, she participated in the miniseries Amazônia and the series Casos e Acasos.

In 2009, she played the role of Dr. Aída Motta, the romantic partner of Dario (Victor Fasano), on Caminho das Índias.

In 2011, Meireles worked with Aguinaldo Silva as Zambeze Maciel in Fina Estampa. In 2012, she performed as Wanda in Salve Jorge by Glória Perez, that brought more attention in the telenovela to human trafficking, disgruntling the human trafficker Morena (Nanda Costa) and the other traffickers. Her first villain role in novelas was lauded by critics.

In 2014, Meireles acted as the medic Adriana in Alto Astral. In 2015, she participated in the Brazilian version of the musical Nine from the duo Möeller and Botelho, playing the role of Lilliane la Fleur, a film producer and ex-vedette of the Cabaret Folies Bergère. She starred that November in the musical Mulheres à Beira de um Ataque de Nervos, in São Paulo, as Lúcia, who is seen on the verge of a nervous breakdown when she is abandoned by her husband. The cast included Marisa Orth and Juan Alba as protagonists. The following year, she was on the cast of the Brazilian version of Cinderella, where she played Lady Tremaine.

Personal life
In 1989, Meireles met Jaime Rabacov, a doctor, to where they became engaged in 1992 and married in 1994. She lived since the 1980s in the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood of Lagoa. Her husband lives on a farm in Miguel Pereira, in a rural part of Rio de Janeiro state. She went there every weekend if she did not have any professional obligations, or every fifteen days, and spent some weeks together, sometimes going to Rio, or for Meireles going there to visit him. The actress has 19 nieces and nephews, 5 great-nieces and great-nephews, and two grandchildren, Santiago and Pilar, her husband's biological grandchildren.