Alberto Ammann: "Hollywood, on a political level, is like the mafia"

"Morality",

(Córdoba, Argentina, 1978) launches, "has to do with doing the right thing".

The right thing! Oh, my God, but what the hell is the right thing, Alberto?

"The correct thing is what is socially accepted as correct, because you can think what you want, but there are a series of rules that divide things between what is right and what is wrong, and you cannot get rid of that."

Let's take an example that is not random: if you have to choose between the life of your daughter or that of several

in your company, what would be the right thing to do?

he replies.

We have not gone crazy with the question: this is one of the moral conflicts faced by the character that the actor brings to life in his latest work,

;

thriller

that as soon as it was released has crept into the most viewed on the platform.

How does it look in the series?

I read that before there was too much examination. Now I have a bit of a draw and I distance myself.

I see what I have contributed to the story and what I haven't, I see how much of Alberto there is in the character.

In the best works I manage to distance myself, I lend my body to the character. What is the technique that you sometimes use to think of animals to prepare the roles? There are many techniques to build a character and sometimes I like to imitate animals , but together with other elements.

It has to do with recreating the essence of the animal, not with imitating it itself.

Some of that energy, some gesture of the animal, that's what you give to the character.

For example: a stop to a head movement can come from work with a pigeon.

The interesting thing about these works is to put something external in one's body,

The issue is to be able to dialogue with the ego to put it aside and have a creative freedom that goes beyond what one has as a character, which is the most difficult part of this job.

To Meryl Streep when you see her in

walk like a very old lady, when she is physically splendid.

It's a great job, achieved by those in the top leagues.

What league are you in? I'm not, nor do I consider myself, to be in the first league.

I think I'm an actor who works better every time he gets older.

I am now 43 years old, not 28, like when I did

, I have worked and learned a lot, and like in any job, experience gives you clues. Do you consider yourself professionally ambitious? Yes. Where do you hope to get to? have something I don't know about, which is financial security.

And bursts out laughing.

In 2020, in an interview in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of a break in activity, Alberto Ammann replied that thank goodness he had some savings.

And perhaps the reader might think: some savings?

But if it comes from succeeding with the

series !

"I don't know what people think, really, but the actors and actresses who earn a lot of money are those who play in the front line. The rest, you can charge well, then you pay 47% to the Treasury - in the best case , if you've earned a good amount of money - and then you don't work for two years and what do you do. The problem with our work is intermittency."

It is normal that in the imaginary rule that the main actor of a series like

, a worldwide hit, must have some economic security. I can assure you that I am not the only one.

I have colleagues who work extremely well and are in trouble with money.

I was shooting

, season three, and filming stopped.

I went back to Madrid, to shut myself up at home.

And to eat from the savings, like everyone else, I suppose, except for people who live day to day, those who don't eat if they don't work for a day. You know about that, right? I worked as a waiter and got paid crap.

72 hours a week, from Monday to Saturday, I remember, 12 hours a day;

that physically liquidated me.

But he was young, and Argentine, who, for better or worse, has opened more doors for us than for Bolivians or Ecuadorians.

Discrimination was the order of the day, but it is not discrimination that does not exist in Argentina.

They exploited me.

When you don't have papers, lobbying is easier, because you don't have a choice.

In construction, where I have friends, that happens a lot.

I have not lived that part, it is worse.

Ammann, of course, is Argentine.

But his last name has European origin, Swiss-German;

he comes from the congregation of the

.

"I've had some tough ancestors, huh?" he jokes, "very very fundamentalist people in their religion, they were people who lived under the fear of God in an extreme way. Many were kicked out of Europe. My great-grandfather emigrated directly from Switzerland to Argentina and in the family there was a division, as in many families in Germany with the Nazis: there were many for and many against. In fact, this great-grandfather was against it and one day my grandfather received a cousin who was aligned with the Nazis and he kicked him out of the house. It is what all

They separate people.

In Argentina I have seen families broken by political arguments and that comes from the media, which let two morons spit on each other in public.

Then people commit themselves in such a crazy way with those who are there, on TV, that they do the same with their brother, father or mother.

It seems surreal to me."

Are you religious? I don't practice any religion, but there is something that is inexplicable to me, that belongs to the mystery.

Sometimes I ask God for various things, but I am not particularly religious.

I do believe in religiosity and I respect it. Regarding politics, I have heard that you would have liked to participate. Yes, I was born in a political sphere: my father and mother were political activists all their lives, creative members of the Humanist Party in the 84, in Argentina.

I was here in Spain from the time I was born two months until 1982, when we returned to Argentina and the Malvinas war broke out.

That was a catastrophe that went wrong, because my mother didn't want to raise me here because of the trouble with heroin and all this, she was scared, and they went to Argentina and the war broke out.

They were linked to the humanist movement and I have grown up in political meetings playing under a table in a cafe.

When I was eight years old, my father talked to me about politics as if he were an adult.

Where would you like to have been a politician? In Argentina, but that daydream has been disappearing.

I consider myself a person who knows about politics because I have studied and because I have lived for many years surrounded by people who were in political action.

But when I came here in 2001 because in Argentina we were on the verge of a Civil War, I came to study Dramatic Art, not Politics. Now I have to ask you for an analysis of Spanish politics... I have been fortunate to travel a lot around the world for this profession.

I think the problems are more or less the same in all countries.

I believe that until the people really have a real democracy there will not be a change. What is a real democracy? I do not conceive that to vote for a person you have to wait four years, that is not a democracy, it is a lie.

There is a technology

which in theory is incorruptible.

With it, you could vote from your phone, you would give people a tool with which they could make decisions, I am not saying about all the laws, because that would be chaos, and even more so in a society that is not used to doing that... You have to understand that the importance of voting is enormous. Wouldn't it be crazy to change the president, for example, every six months? I think that after a year and a half you can know if the measures promised by a president are in place.

And, in any case, it is the will of the people.

The people are going to be wrong, but... aren't we already wrong every four years?

Sure, time after time.

There are a lot of people here who do politics to inflate their pockets with money, they don't give a damn about people.

And we have to get those people out, whoever wants money to become a footballer, what do I know,

but that he should not get involved in politics, because politics is a service for the people. Now he says that he is an abstentionist and this is over. No, no, I vote whenever I can.

I vote with my eternal doubts about what will happen with my vote, because I do not believe in this system, I believe that this system is built by those who make money, for themselves, by the great centers of power and the rest that they give us.

And that hurts me because I see people suffer. He has also denounced the political pressure exerted on the cinema, from the US to other countries. Hollywood is, on the one hand, an industry where there are very talented people creating content and taking it forward: technicians , artists... but on the other hand it's a huge power tool.

What I have heard, from people who are involved, who have been in meetings, is: "

[laughs].

I want to recommend people to watch it: it's a super hard series, but it's a very entertaining action

, with a very interesting seasoning that has to do with these spaces of power that are there as if they were working in the background.

It's like background music that's going to get bigger bigger until you can make it out.

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