Bárbara Lennie: "In Spain, directors have never written for the level of talent of their actresses"

• PABLO R. ROCES

  @Pavlinrodriguez

  Madrid

Updated Monday, April 25, 2022-01:57

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It took

(Madrid, 1984) a few years, and a good part of her health, to understand that in life sometimes you have to slow down.

She, who was always a "kamikaze" in her career, has learned to ride it better.

«I have always preferred to be working than having some wines or gin and tonics on the beach.

Now I'm not into that, I get tired because I don't have the same energy I had when I was 30 years old.

Although I say so, the energy has not disappeared because it is implicit in that girl who, at the age of six, exchanged with her parents a well-off neighborhood in Buenos Aires for the lower area of ​​Pinar de Chamartín in 1990. «

.

It marks you the rest of your life and that mine was not a fucking experience, I never lacked for anything.

But the uprooting marks your whole life because over the years you discover that it is difficult for you to say goodbye or go to sleep at someone else's house.

What does not seem to cost him is getting on stage.

He will do it again this Friday at the Valle-Inclán Theater with Los farsantes, the new Pablo Remón in Javier Cámara's return to the theater a decade later.

She will be Ana Velasco, an actress stuck in her career.

Just what Bárbara Lennie is not, who is going through

.

Where does this continuous questioning of the actors and actresses come from?

That this job is deeply unstable and you don't know if it's worth not knowing what your life is going to be, if you're going to be able to sustain yourself or fulfill yourself.

That makes you question yourself all the time.

And in the end, is it worth it? It has totally paid off for me, my identity has been built as an actress for better or for worse.

But I am a lucky one, I have worked a lot and I can no longer imagine my life outside of this. But it was difficult for you to get to the big roles.

You did the opposite path to someone who triumphs at a very young age.

How much did you think that this was not for you? I did not understand what I was doing wrong so that things did not work.

In this job there is something very macabre to think that everything has to do with you and that something is wrong.

That generated uncertainty in me and many times I wanted to go out into the street to shout that they give me a chance.

But it is that I have never been able to say until now because I did not have a plan B. Does the fact that you always had jobs, even if they were small, influence? That has a very tricky side because when you are 23 years old it is very good,

but after 30 you no longer want small jobs.

In this work you play with the fantasy that suddenly someone discovers you and changes your life.

I have always believed a lot in myself and it happened to me.

It happened to her with Carlos Vermut and

.

And from there everything was on the rise except her mental and physical health.

“I worked like an animal.

».

I'm not going to dedicate my whole life to being an actress, I want to leave a better world now that it's fucked up

And why did you decide to stop? It's just that I hit it right away and I almost hit it because I had a gynecological emergency.

I got scared because I was bleeding to death and then I saw that I couldn't take it anymore.

I shot Petra, Sunday Illness, The Kingdom and Everybody Knows in a year.

In this one I had a little bed next to the set to lie down before shooting and I decided to stop for a year or so.

I was exhausted, I no longer enjoyed my work because it was too demanding of me.

And now you're amused again?

I have completely fallen back in love, it is a lighter place where I smell if a problem comes to me.

But the thing is that I'm very crazy, I'm very heavy and I get into the papers a lot, although I no longer have anxiety about working. In your entire career, only one woman has directed you.

Is this industry really feminizing?

Now yes because the most important thing has to do with young women,

but it is very recent.

I have many scripts on the table and all but one are for women.

It was time for it to change, how much longer did we have to wait if the talent was there.

The cinema has always been a very classist and very masculine place.

Is working more comfortable in a women's space?

In my experience, yes.

It is in our nature to maintain ecosystems and links of harmony.

We are infected with an enormous energy to celebrate that we are here because it was not our natural right. Have you suffered situations of harassment as colleagues like Maribel Verdú used to say? I have felt more paternalism and I have had to do the work of waking up with certain attitudes that now I can not stand.

But I have never suffered harassment, but imagine growing up in that Spain and with those directors that Maribel Verdú had.

In this world you stop being the most fashionable actress or the one that is hottest in a second

Has the political activism of the parents also been printed on Bárbara Lennie? My whole family is marked by the Argentine dictatorship, which was very harsh on them.

They are committed people and have taught me a lot.

I'm not going to spend my whole life dedicated to my little things as an actress, I want to invest energy, time and money in making a better world now that it's a fucking shit. the current refugee movement?

It is a topic that cannot be foreign to you when your family comes from there, when they had to leave their country because otherwise they would be killed.

I live with a lot of pain and it disturbs me to live in a country bordering Africa seeing the hell of those people.

Is there a contrast in the treatment according to the origin of the refugee? There is tremendous racism in the good intentions because the response with Ukraine and the millions of euros raised is overwhelming, which seems wonderful to me.

I wish it were like that with all migrations, but we have seen people kicked out with sticks in the Canary Islands.

When we are far away we think that they are poor blacks and Arabs and the empathy there already fails. When you presented María and the others you said that the 30 had affected you and you felt like an insecure girl as the protagonist For me the 30 were a little intense, now I am much more located and calmer in my body and my skin.

The more aware you are that life is happening and you evolve, it's fantastic.

But I still have other insecurities.

Do you still think that success lasts a second like you said when you picked up the Goya? I still don't know what success is.

For me it is not being a millionaire, it is waking up every day calm with my life.

Now that in this world everything is going to be fucked in the ass in a second, you stop being the fashionable actress or the hottest one very quickly.

It is better to look for another way of being in the world because that is exhausting.

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