Julieta Serrano: the eternal rebirth | Culture



There is a Julieta Serrano For each generation. The younger ones may have discovered it now for their participation in the film Pain and glory, by Pedro Almodóvar, but she has already lived through all this before: the Goya, the Oscars, that the press pursues ... It was she who in 1972 snapped José Luis López Vázquez one of the most famous phrases in Spanish cinema, “¡¡¡ What are you going to tell me, miss! ”, In the final sequence of My dear lady, by Jaime de Armiñán. And his was also that almodovarian mane carded that occupied half screen in Women at the edge of a nervous attack. They can even meet gifs on the Internet that loop its iconic motorcycle profile at full speed through the streets of Madrid. "It was my real hair, not a wig," he rushes to clarify whenever the subject comes up.

Now it has happened again. His role as mother of Antonio Banderas in Pain and glory, after Almodóvar's own mother, he has put her back on the front line of fame. It is favorite to take next Saturday the Goya as best supporting actress after having already won the Fierce. "I had forgotten how crazy this is, the hustle and bustle of the galas, the dress, the hairdresser, the arrangement ...", he recalled last week on the phone, in one of the few spare time he has had in the last month. "I have a good time, but I'm 87 years old!" Yesterday he fulfilled them.

Not that I haven't worked in recent times. On the contrary, Julieta Serrano has not stopped acting since she started doing amateur theater in her city, Barcelona, ​​in the mid-fifties. “What happens is that I have always been very dramatic and did not fit in the kind of cinema that was made in Spain when I was starting. I was not funny nor did I adjust to the other canons of women that were carried. Nor have I ever lost my ass for doing movies or television, my life has always been the theater, which is much less media and does not give so much fame. And in between, I've made movies, ”he explains. More than sixty, which are not few. Not all as media as My dear lady Y Women, but some very notable: The bilingual lover (1993), The bows (1997), Caresses (1998) and When you come back to my side (1999), among others, in addition to four others with Almodóvar: Pepi, Luci, Bom and other girls from the pile (1980), In darkness (nineteen eighty one), Bullfighter (1986) and tie me (1990).

Also in the theater he has given the bell more than once. For example, in 1969, he starred with Núria Espert the mythical assembly of The maids directed by Víctor García, banned by Franco in Madrid and later acclaimed in Paris and Belgrade. He has worked in more than a hundred productions with all kinds of directors, from the most orthodox to the most modern, both classical and contemporary works, modest format montages and large productions, in Spanish and Catalan. Basically, he hates boredom. “I can hardly say do not. I don't know how to be home without work. Not even now that I have an age, ”he acknowledges.

In 2017 he came to think about retiring. “Not because I felt like it, really. I was 60 years of profession and I told myself that I already played the same way. That maybe I had to organize a party and announce it, ”he says. That was when the phone rang: Daniel Bianco, director of the Teatro de la Zarzuela, offered to participate in a lyrical adaptation of Bernarda Alba's house. "But Daniel, I don't sing!" She reminded him. It was not necessary for his role. He didn't think twice, he had never participated in an opera and he was curious. In addition, Barbara Lluch was going to direct her, granddaughter of her friend Núria Espert, whom she had seen born. At the club the retirement party.

Almost at once the phone rang again. Almodóvar. I had not seen it for centuries. He talked about Pain and glory Impossible to resist. “With Pedro I have always understood myself well. I am very disciplined working, I let myself go, he likes that. I remember when the script of In darkness, What madness, I didn't imagine how that could be done, ”he says.

Luckily he did not resist. Everything that came later would have been lost. The National Theater Award in 2018. Acknowledgments here and there. Let her stop again in the street to congratulate her. The thrill of aspiring for the Oscars. Aren't you going to the Hollywood gala? "Phew! I no longer have a body. Besides, I already went when she was nominated Women… We had a great time! ”, He remembers. Of course, warns the directors and producers, "body to continue working I have plenty". Don't think they want to retire.

A long idyll with Pedro Almodóvar

Six collaborations with Almodóvar. Julieta Serrano and Pedro Almodóvar have collaborated six times. In three, the actress has played the mother of Antonio Banderas.

Singular Scarlet 0'Hara. In his first job with the filmmaker, Pepi, Luci, Bom and other girls from the pile (1980), Serrano embodied a character who was credited with a sensational name: woman dressed as Scarlet O’Hara. Actually she is an actress who runs out of the theater where she represents The Lady of the Camellias in search of his son.

The superior of the humiliated. In his second collaboration, In darkness (1983), Serrano played a character with more substance: lesbian mother superior of the Madrid convent Congregation of the Redeemed Humiliated.

All the mothers of Banderas. In Bullfighter (1986) is the progenitor of the actor, a student of the leading bullfighter. In Women aboard a nervous breakdown (1988) plays Lucia, the mad mother of Banderas. And in Tie me up! (1989) embodies Alma, the long-suffering wife of Máximo Espejo, a film director of series B that Francisco Rabal gives life to.

.



Source link