credits his father's genes with his own acting ability. He noted in an interview: "I was pained by my father's absence and, in a way, I always felt like there was something missing, although the bond between us was not strong." Victor Rebengiuc completed his secondary studies at the Military High School, a school which he is grateful to for having instilled in him a sense of discipline. After a period of collaboration with an amateur troupe located in the Vitan area, Rebengiuc attended the Theater Institute, where he had for his professor actress Aura Buzescu, whom he credits, alongside Clody Bertola, with having inspired his technique. Among the artists who have shaped his work, Rebengiuc also includes the major Soviet actors Mikhail Zharov and Ruben Simonov, whose performances in films he followed closely, and his older Romanian colleague Radu Beligan. He says: "Back when I started I was acting with the amateurs, I was imitating Beligan. [...] Only when I was undergoing examination at the Institute, I was told, 'hey, you're imitating Beligan!' And then I realized it and try to get rid of this thing." He graduated in 1956, and, after a six-month stint at the National Theater in Craiova, returned to Bucharest, settling in the vicinity of Cişmigiu Gardens and starting work with Bulandra. Rebengiuc was at the time in a relationship with Anca Vereşti, whom he married in 1960, divorcing her five years later. Rebengiuc's first drama role was as Biff in Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman, a performance which he regrets, describing its director, Dinu Negreanu, as an untalented person promoted over "political reasons". He also recounts that training for the part brought his first collaboration with Liviu Ciulei, which he sees as one of the few positive aspects of the production. At around the same time, he began a collaboration with the Teatrul Mic company and director Radu Penciulescu, being, together with Leopoldina Bălănuţă, George Constantin and Olga Tudorache, one of the first actors to embark on the project. Rebengiuc appeared in several of Penciulescu's experimental productions: Two for the Seesaw by William Gibson, Tango by Sławomir Mrożek and Richard II by William Shakespeare. Theater critic Simona Chiţan saw the collaboration as an aspect of the liberalization following the socialist realist years: "Penciulescu and Rebengiuc have thus opened [...] a positive period for Romanian theater: the repertoire had been widened, foreign, not