His therapist warned him a few months ago. Beware of success, for it can kill. Susi Sánchez set fire to that phrase, so she’s wary of her new status as the maturing star of Spanish cinema. Until not so long ago, she quietly lived in a peaceful corner with her discreet supporting roles and gave acting classes. It was one of those high schools respected by the industry but unknown to the general public, with a skyrocketing career in film, theater and television, though never short of work. Until suddenly, when he was about to retire, the offers and prices began to multiply. And with them came a kind of storm, which he attempted to cross aboard a humble boat.
“The only thing I ask is that I can continue my job as before. What I like is unraveling my characters and nothing else. What I like about my job is my job,” he says on a sunny morning in Madrid last winter. “I know that many become actors in order to gain fame and success somewhere. I never wanted to go anywhere. I didn’t need that recognition. It’s a very big whirlwind and it’s getting me a little older,” he says. She doesn’t want to sound ungrateful, but she prefers to think that this dream is coming to an end. One day, soon, they will stop calling her and she will live in peace again. “If you are not aware that the falls exist, the falls are a bump. Did you see that I fell at the Goyas? Maybe it was a premonition…”.
Susi poses with a Max Mara shirt, a Cortana t-shirt, Joaquín Berao earrings and Isidoro Hernández necklaces.Santiago Belizón
There is no false modesty in the words of the 68-year-old actress. Maybe just a small dose of self-deception to keep him sane. One of the finest actresses of her generation, capable of conveying truths about the human condition like few others? It will be less. Basically, his thing isn’t so bad: he learns a role and then recites it. She doesn’t think she has any more talent than any neighbor’s daughter who starts studying four afternoons in a row. “I’ve had what’s called Impostor Syndrome my whole life. For a long time I thought they would realize that it was all a scam, that I was worthless.” And when did you start to believe that? “With the Goya for Cinco Lobitos. That night I said to myself: well, maybe there’s something…” he laughs. The award rewarded her role as a matriarch faced with illness, harshly but self-sacrificingly, full of regret and resignation. Almost as much as the Goya, he was thrilled that real stranger news like this wrote: “You’re more Basque than my Basque mother.” She’s actually Valencian – she was born in Xirivella – but we’ll get to that later.
Despite not being from Biscay, Sánchez was the first choice for the character of Begoña. “I wanted to portray a lifelong housewife outside of the ordinary. Just because someone is committed to home doesn’t mean they aren’t a complex being with secrets, even if they weren’t always portrayed as such,” says Cinco lobitos director Alauda Ruiz de Azúa. “Susi brought that mystery, personality, sense of humor very much like a Basque mother, dry but very popular. It was the perfect combination.” Papers have been raining down on him since its premiere. The actress has just released Loli Tormenta, the posthumous film directed by Agustí Villaronga (1953-2023), in which she plays a grandmother with Alzheimer’s, and is preparing, among other things the Mentiras pasajeros series, a production of El Deseo published by Paramount+ other things you can’t promote.
“I like to unravel my characters and nothing more. What I like about my job is my job,” the actress, who wears an Alexander McQueen suit and Bottega Veneta shoes, tells Santiago Belizón
Suddenly she had to be picky, she said yes to everything that came her way. And he admits that he feels bad. “It seems unfair to me to decide. Why some yes and others no?” he replies with an inexplicable frankness. Now, for the first time in five decades of experience, they’re also stopping it on the street. “But people respect me a lot, more than my young colleagues who work in television . They are touched, there is a familiarity. They come close to me, but from a distance.” Maybe because it’s a little intrusive? “I don’t do it on purpose, but they tell me that. I don’t know if it’s on It’s because of my size or the way I speak, which can be a bit blunt or harsh at times. I guess it’s a defense mechanism. We all have our way of going through life.” And what’s yours? Sánchez has something that reminiscent of a running bird, a somewhat lanky elegance, false forms of a diva hiding a disturbing insecurity, an almost pathological modesty, an irrepressible penchant for sincerity, a somewhat cavernous voice that seems to come from an inner abyss. This beauty – not necessarily plastic, but also – that good people like to radiate. He attributes his lack of self-esteem, about which he is transparent, to his upbringing. “At home they didn’t want me to be an actress. I was a very obedient girl and it hurt me that my father didn’t give me his blessing. He was an older man, born in 1913, and he thought it was a whore and fag profession. For him we came into the world to do what we have to do, not what we want to do,” he says.
For Sánchez, acting was, among other things, a form of self-knowledge. “She’s a person with a keen interest in human psychology, including her own,” says director Ramón Salazar, who propelled her to the top with 10,000 Nights Nowhere and La enfermedad del Domingo when she was still a semi-unknown one that received its first Goya in 2019. “He gets on so well with characters that are complex and intricate because he knows how to locate their trauma.” The actress usually works from her experience, from her childhood, from her family. “But he does it from the light. She knew how to forgive those who hurt and paralyzed her. It’s like the journey and suffering was worth it in the healing channel that art was for her,” adds Salazar.
Susi Sánchez wears caftan Cortana and bracelets Joaquín Berao. Santiago Belzon
Susi Sánchez brings her family history to the surface. She was born “accidentally” in Valencia in 1955 to a “left” soldier, descended from a lineage of railway workers from Extremadura who had fought on the Republican side before taking a job in the Franco army. “He accepted it mainly because he had access to the military commissary, a supply of bread, powdered milk, coffee and oil. He went there to support his family and now he has stayed forever,” says the actress. “He was a man who lived in fear. He was worried that someone might see the Jesus Christ Superstar poster in my room. He would stay up late and talk to me about the war. When he was drunk he would always ask himself the same thing: ‘What is the meaning of life?’ It upset me.”
His mother was from Murcia, the daughter of a “hustler” and the only survivor of all his siblings who died as children. “She was a much tougher woman who got married when she just turned 17. All his youth was lost. She was a very vital woman, but she must not be very happy. She was one of those incredible women who went above and beyond, albeit sometimes at the expense of those around her. He asked a lot of us.” He died seven years ago at the age of 90. What did he feel? “Relief,” Sánchez replies without hesitation. A Cuban friend, a Yoruba priest, told him that his death was a spell would break, and it did.
Since the death of her mother and her brother Ismael, also an actor, Susi Sánchez’s career has been on the up. He’s embarrassed to say it, but knows it’s no coincidence. “My brother didn’t work that much and I had a hard time. In my generation, there was a kind of tacit understanding in the families: Unless the men were successful, the women couldn’t be. So I couldn’t make it, you know?” he replies. “Over time I got rid of the brake feeling of not having the right. When my mother died, that feeling was already final. This freedom also includes her private life as it allowed her to acknowledge her lesbian inclination. “Actually, my family has always known, but my mother asked me not to speak about these things in public until she was dead.”
The artist wears a Gucci dress and necklace Isidoro Hernández.Santiago Belizón
As a young man he felt the call of God. “Luckily it didn’t last. That was great…” Sánchez recalls. He points to the nuns at his school, examples of pettiness rather than moral integrity. “They tricked me and I was already a pretty insecure kid. They bullied me, although it wasn’t called that at the time. But I’ve suffered it in every school I’ve been to without exception.” Because? “Because she was weird, too tall, and she was blonde on top of that. And in this country, you couldn’t be weird, tall, and blond. They told me he had the face of a horse,” he replies. He didn’t have much support at home either. “They haven’t given me much confidence, no. My sister Isabel was the only one who believed in me. Always always. She is the only one I could share my successes with. My mother always answered me when they nominated me for any award: ‘And when is the draw?’ And he laughs, although it seems sad.
It’s hard to believe that Sánchez didn’t make a single film between 1974 and 1994. He says it was around the time of the revelation that “he didn’t have much to teach,” and because of a disastrous debut in A Another… Couple, with Lina Morgan and José Luis López Vázquez, where she became a nurse “with suspenders and miniskirt” played. “I had a terrible time,” he recalls. Later he took refuge in the theater, at the hands of directors such as José Luis Gómez and Daniel Veronese, and also on television, where he made Golden Weddings, some Estudio 1 and a permanent section in the youth program Cajón desastre with Miriam Díaz -Aroka . With the advent of the private sector, he chained roles in series such as “House Doctor”, “Hands on Work” or “The House of Worries”. It hurts a bit to imagine what Carlos Saura, Mario Camus or Pilar Miró would have done with it.
Actress wears shirt, bodysuit, skirt and shoes Valentino Santiago Belizón
His size and sexual orientation have cost him a number of roles. Many didn’t know what to do with their 1.76 meter height. For example, Alejandro Amenábar excluded her from Thesis for taking several heads from Ana Torrent. “They couldn’t find anyone who was a good match for me. The men were shorter than me. They also didn’t give me secondarys because they saw more of me than the protagonist. So in the theater they started giving me abstract characters or atmospheric phenomena. I made the sun, the wind and the moon,” he says. “As I got older, more and more boys came who were better fed and bigger than me. The Cola Cao generation saved me.”
Being a lesbian didn’t open any doors for her either. “There were directors who had the romantic idea of living some kind of story with me. And since it couldn’t be… One didn’t call me for 10 years. I can’t say the name because he’s still alive but I’d love for him to get a good one as he’s done it with a lot of colleagues. He told us that we would no longer work in this country,” he recalls. And with Vicente Aranda, with whom he shot four times? “It was different, although he also stopped calling me. I introduced my wife [la actriz y maestra de actores Consuelo Trujillo, de quien se separó hace cuatro años] and we never worked together again. He didn’t tell me that was the reason, but I can guess. I think he was quite attracted to me even though he was more than married but he liked women a lot. I purposely told her a little bit so she would know I was busy,” she says. The MeToo alerted him to the seriousness of behaviors that he thought were normal and which weren’t. “All actresses have suffered abuse. Whoever says no is lying,” he says. “What happened was that before it was solved with a slap in the face and now with a complaint. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but the police don’t have to come. I usually fix it with a good kick in the balls.” This is how the third act of Susi Sánchez begins, and it looks fast-paced.
This is confirmed by Pedro Almodóvar, with whom he has worked four times in small roles. “Not only is she a very fine actress, but she has a stunning and unusual physique with a very unusual range. She can be rude, like in Cinco lobitos, but she can also be downright clever,” says the director. “I feel indebted to her for offering her short things that didn’t match her talent. He’s the perfect age for the type of roles I’m writing now. It’s my great hope to work with her on a bigger project.”
CREDITS
Styling: Beatrice Moreno de la Cova.
Production: Maia Hoetink.
Photo assistant: Henar de Torres.
Styling assistant: Diego Serna.
Makeup and hairstyling: Cynthia de León (COOL) for Mac and Aveda.
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