Born to Csángó parents in Western Moldavia, he was initially destined for a career as a priest in the Roman Catholic Church, but left to study acting in the late 1940s, graduating from the OMEC conservatoire.

His break and artistic recognition occurred during a time when Romania was under a communist regime, and he took on a number of roles in ideological plays, as well as in the 1951 propaganda film In Our Village.

Antal still received poor reviews for his early stage work and voice acting, and was also regarded as politically suspect by the authorities, which accounted for his relative marginalization.

From the early 1960s, the Romanian Radio Company consecrated Antal as one of its main reciters of poems by Mihai Eminescu, a work which made him nationally famous.

[7] As noted by Corlaciu, Antal only picked up solo performances "for almost a quarter of a century" because of "zealots" (habotnici) who had tried to prevent him from acting in regular plays; the scope of his activity went from the ancestral ballad Miorița to fragments from not-yet-published junior poets of the 1960s.

[1] His artistic peak coincided with the era of Romanian communism, resulting in more controversial aspects of his career: as noted by Vitcu, Antal agreed to appear in plays honoring Communist-Party activists, and in this "paid his tribute, like all actors did.

"[10] He was assigned a leading role in Jean Georgescu's 1951 film In Our Village, which celebrated collective farming practices,[16] though, according to critic Călin Căliman, it was objectively superior to other productions of day.

[1] He was frequently employed as a narrator throughout that decade, but, according to columnist Mihai Iacob, his contributions were markedly "theatrical"—until he corrected himself for a Nina Behar's documentary on painter Ștefan Luchian (1958).

[19] Around 1954, Antal was flouting communist expectations by joining an informal "literary circle" of social drinkers, which included sculptor Ion Vlad, poets Tiberiu Iliescu and Dimitrie Stelaru, journalist Emil Serghie, philosopher Sorin Pavel, and lawyer-diarist Petre Pandrea.

[21] As recalled by writer and period witness Ion Papuc, his habit of drinking before public appearances harmed his chances as a communist propagandist: once made to perform for a rural show celebrating collectivization, the inebriated Antal forgot the "propaganda poetry" he was supposed to recite, and improvised by performing George Coșbuc's "We Demand Land", which featured a celebration of individual property and roused the peasants to rebellion; as a result, "communist activists fled the room in silence, then ran over the fields", and the collectivization project was effectively curbed in that village.

[25] This view was partly contradicted by Iosif Antal, who argued in 2007 that his brother had been largely banned from the stage after the Doina incident, being forever "consumed by [...] all those great roles he dreamed of, and could have acted in".

[24] Under contract with Nottara, in 1965 Ludovic appeared alongside Sandu Sticlaru in John Mortimer's The Dock Brief—as argued by theater critic Mircea Alexandrescu, the play was imperfect, in that the two actors seemed not to have chemistry with each other.

[32] In June 1969, Nottara introduced a number of "literary matinees for the youth" with a stage adaptation of Garabet Ibrăileanu's Adela; Antal appeared in it as Doctor Codrescu.

One would be hard-pressed to understand why theater directors, dramaturges, authors alike, have been neglecting to even note that Ludovic Antal was alive these past five years [Carandino's emphasis].

[36] His career was soon after cut short by disease: in March 1970, after appearing at one of Petrovici's conferences to read out from Titu Maiorescu's articles, he coughed up blood;[37] he was then diagnosed with lung cancer.

[1] As Pas reports, the poets of the day proved ungrateful to their deceased friend, as only Corlaciu, Grigore Hagiu and Ion Horea took time to write their respective homages.