We know interview partners and interviewers from other times. In a way, this is an interview among colleagues. De la Torre was a journalist before becoming an interpreter, and while he doesn’t practice, his ponytail doesn’t seem entirely clipped, at least in terms of the impulse to ask questions and being curious about others. We meet in a café in the center of Madrid, in the basement of which a preparatory meeting for the Goya Gala is taking place. At the agreed time he enters the room, followed by the actress and co-host Clara Lago, from whom he says goodbye affectionately, orders an after-dinner drink and prepares for a conversation. Bigarren, his lifelong manager, an affable and reserved Basque, keeps in touch, and while he doesn’t intervene when it’s not necessary, he can’t help but nod, roll his eyes and, from time to time, comment on his representative’s departure to laugh . Trust, as is well known, has no filters.
Does journalist De la Torre have more monkeys with the one that falls out? of office or discharge for which he was released?
Look: My recurring nightmare is that I failed my degree. Or that they change my text or video editing system and I don’t know how to do my job. I had a critical period at 30 years old where although I had already worked as a journalist and had some roles as an actor, nothing materialized and I thought that I would never find a profession that would get me out of life.
Did you have a plan B?
Well, my brothers told me that I could become an administrator in the transport company in Malaga where my father worked and that he would always have a plate of chickpeas on his table, but I didn’t stop curdling until I was almost 40 years old and they had their doubts. How could they not have her if I had her.
And when did you stop having them?
When they gave me the Goya for Azuloscurocasinegro but see how it would be like when I left TV, they offered me three films at the same time, one in A Coruña, another in Barcelona and another in Madrid, on the same dates . Bigarren sent me a PDF called Madness and told me it was impossible and I insisted that I wanted to do everything.
Out of greed? for the ego? Out of fear?
Because I had and still have poor man syndrome. And because I’m competitive: I always want more. This comes from my dad telling me you have to be number one. He died in 1986 when I was doing COU and my mother in 1992. I’m sorry my father didn’t see me collecting a Goya and my mother’s thing is touching because she told me she didn’t want to die without it to see myself as an actor and six later I was shooting the Padre Coraje series which was a huge hit in Andalusia. You never stop being an orphan, but you know that, you have the eyes of an orphan.
Now you are the father mirror.
They are the circles of life. Children set you free and judge you. Now it will look like I’m speaking at a religious convention and I’m not one to teach lessons let alone happiness but I think if you weren’t a father or mother you are missing out on something big.
Did being a journalist help you become an actor?
Buah: I have headlines, aunt. Do you know how much I spent making The Kingdom talking to politicians, judges and corrupt businessmen? I’m telling you unofficially [me suelta detalles suculentos de personajes envueltos en sumarios conocidísimos]. This is a super boundary problem. Evil, violence have no justification but explanation. And I have to understand the other. People want you to hear it. There is something inhuman in solitude. I ignore myself to understand the other. I think if I’m a good actor it’s because of this ability to forget myself.
Is that why he’s such a good bastard?
[Bigarren se ríe] Not everyone has a reason to do something. Donald Trump will love his children, I say. Melitón Manzanas, who I played in a miniseries, would have some virtue. A casting director, Laura Cepeda, once told me that if my face was done, I would be successful. Now that I have a dog’s face [guiño]I think it’s easier. I’m not like Bela Lugosi who said he slept in a coffin to play Dracula. I’ll play you locked up in The Infinite Trench and then I’ll go to sleep in a damn case that’s started production. But hey, there’s a journey there, that’s how it is.
It’s already over”travel“, the fetish word of actors and actresses.
Well, there’s something of that, and that’s how we understand each other. It’s like the hook thing in journalism. The actor’s journey would be the pole of journalism. Or don’t you interview me because I’m going to be presenting the Goyas?
Of course. Knowing them, will you shorten your colleagues’ speeches?
It’s true they’re long as viewers, but it’s your moment and you don’t want it to end. The other day I timed mine for The Kingdom: two minutes forty, an eternity, and on top of that I forgot to mention the public servants in education and health: [me recita de memoria el discurso que llevaba preparado] “You don’t need to shut up the word home because you use it every day at work…”.
Now he tells me he likes paying taxes.
I love it. Well, not so much that I made up the emotion of the speech. But yes, I like it, I feel deep down the conviction to pay taxes. I once read a Finnish manager who said he pays 50% taxes but still makes a lot of money. So that.
Do you feel well paid?
Yes, Bigarren would say no, not at all, but yes, I am.
The octopus will fall. It is an active tweeter. What does it bring to you?
Information aside, that’s what I told you before trying to understand the other. I retweeted the other day macarena olona, which has caused an amazing change, at least in this network: These things fascinate me. Already Cristina Cifuentes I met her on Twitter: she saw my films, we are ideologically opposites, but as people we find each other. I have to understand the other person, not just as an actor, but as a person. I think it’s the only way to survive with what we have on us. Look, you have a nice headline there.
let’s make a deal Give me the headline you’d like to see in the interview and I’ll ask you the question.
[Silencio largo] Damn… there are so many causes: climate change is very visible, the polarization, the need for the left to unite for the elections…
And something more personal? Is the social responsibility of the artist so difficult for you?
Not from the artist, from the uncle, from Antonio. These are the topics I talk about with other parents at my kids’ school, but they put an artichoke in my hand and don’t.
He didn’t answer me as he felt like a master of his craft.
It wasn’t a day. It was gradual. But it’s true, when you see yourself nominated again and again, you start to believe it. The decade from 2010 to 2020 was glorious, far more than I could ever have dreamed of.
And how is that presented to you?
different. I think I’m beginning a period of transition. From trying to do other things like working outside. Or make a comedy or a scary one. Don’t lose the passion. Not becoming Antonio de la Torre, who plays Antonio de la Torre. Look, another headline.
That’s good and you know it. They just made him a “distinguished student” of the Complutense’s Faculty of Journalism. What do you think?
I hope this will make my nightmares go away once and for all.
THE LORD OF THE GOYAS
Now an actor and then an apprentice journalist, Alberto San Juan was the first person to meet Antonio de la Torre (Málaga, 54 years old) at the Faculty of Information Sciences of the Complutense University of Madrid, where he studied journalism at his institute in Málaga. And who poured the poison of interpretation into his body. “I’m an actor because of Alberto,” says De la Torre today, who in Máximo, the great cartoonist and father of his friend, “was the closest thing to a father figure” in the capital, having just buried his father. Today, 35 years later, De la Torre is the most cited actor at the Goya Awards with 14 nominations and two awards for Azuloscurocasinero and El reino. On February 11, he will moderate the Gala 2023 together with the actress Clara Lago.
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