Imanol Arias. Riaño, 1956. He has been one of the most famous people in Spain for almost 40 years, but he does not stop and goes to the beach. Just released Sordo , a western in the Civil War, and continues on TV ( Tell me ) and the theater ( The colonel has no one to write ).

Another Civil War movie? I think the Civil War movies that were done a lot for a while talked about wounds that aren't closed. I have never heard anyone complain that his grandfather was in a tank in the battle of the Ebro, a missile fell and he died. No. The complaint is that my grandfather was buried in a fucking ditch. It's very different. And the Civil War movies were always made in that context. Therefore, they were very ideological and take sides. But there are other visions of the Civil War, which have more to do with action and style. Obviously, seeing a teacher's repression is not the same as a battle. If, for example, you adapt to the cinema The Year of the Wolfram , it is a story of cowboys on horseback and gold mines. But you can tell it that way or you can tell the story by focusing on someone who was left in a gutter. And that's where the conflict is created. And the Civil War vision of young creators is more like that of today's Spain. For them it is a scenario, because the ideological conflict is far away, that is for those of my age. Actually, 'Deaf' is a Western in the Civil War. What interests me about this film and working with young directors is that they have generationally changed an important point. His films are seen and not heard. The stories are not literary. And I have been fortunate to work on several of the most magical and beautiful literary films about the postwar period: Demons in the garden, Paper birds ... In Sordo , the political or social conflict of that particular moment is not important. From the comic on which it is based, it is pure western. It's a story that tells movies, not the other way around. It has been an adventure. Do you still think it is an adventure to act? I think the actor is like the war correspondent who, yes, has to be a journalist, but above all he has to be an adventurer. You are doing cinema, 'Tell me' and theater at the same time. Vice or necessity? These are things that came to me at a time when they suited me very well. Contrary to what happens with women, for us the papers do not disappear at my age and we are not so many to do them. I am aware that, as I am very famous and able to act, I am offered many characters because they believe that interest and my presence will help the movie, although I believe that interest at the box office is not so much. So they offer me many things. What happens is that I already work without fear, without pressure. For me, work is just a way of making a living. I am very interested in the result of the films and I care very little about everything else. Why do you say that the actors of your generation are scarce? It is that exactly my age we were three, then there were people close above and below. Juanjo Puigcorbé, who I no longer see working, and Antonio Resines, who is a thousand things. Well, and Lluís Homar, who is a year younger and has always preferred theater, but is the host. I was going to Barcelona with 20 years and there was already a 19-year-old blond starring in the Lliure. A beast. So it doesn't happen to us like girls: you have offers. But as Fernán Gómez said, what he has to give the job is to live. There are already few squatters here. I am just looking to grow old with dignity living from acting and not apoltronar.And does not apoltrona one starring in the same series for 20 years? Whenever I have thought about quitting, the commitment has been able to me. A long series, even if only six seasons like Los Soprano , only survive when there is conflict around or within it. When everyone says he's cool from Paraguay, it's over. In Tell Me , for different vicissitudes, something has happened every year that has put the series in the pillory and has prevented us from accommodating ourselves. The situation is rare, but today we still argue for a phrase. That motivates me. One of those motor-conflicts was the problem of Ana Duato and yours with the Treasury, which will now go to trial. Does it bother you to talk about it, does it frustrate you to be recurring in interviews? No, but you get nervous. Three times a year I do promotion and I have to face this issue, of which I already said what I had to say. This job makes you a person who speaks and it seems that you always have something interesting to say, but the reality is that it is not so, we are not so capable of doing it and we have no damn idea how to deal with certain questions. We are like any other person, but it is usual for the actors to pronounce you on political and social issues. It is true that there are things that you get into because you consider them to be fundamental and you want to take advantage of your speaker. But now I have stopped doing it because my way of dealing with things has changed: until something does not happen, I am not interested. We spend the day speculating on politics, with work ... Well, we'll see if Tell Me is over and if Government is formed. Then we will value it. Before it is speaking by speaking. So, are your political actor times over? What happens is that now everything is going too fast and it is very difficult to put yourself at the forefront of something as a citizen. You had time before. You were anti NATO and you had an interview a year to say it, everything was cooked and written over low heat, you could think about it. Now everything is rushed, it runs over you. Of course, the good thing is that before, if you screwed up, it endured. Today you can screw it up a thousand times and forget it after 10 minutes. We were also younger and we were more concerned with political issues than now, deep down, we think they are no longer our war. Have you given yourself up to cynicism? It is that in my career everything has already been said and I have done very well. I could retire now and say that I have been an actor and everyone knows it. He will forget, but for the moment it is so. Now the challenge is to see if you succeed and manage to contribute something, that work does not bore you and you do not become a heavy one who is protesting all day for having to work and for the greater you are. That is the last thing that one has to fall in. And from this perspective that the years have given you, do you look back and recognize yourself? Yes. I have lived the profession well and I have not taken it to heart enough to suffer, I have not been paranoid. I have never believed myself the best, but I know it worked. This profession is not so complex as to suffer it. We are interpreters, we have to fill the stories of others with personality and not shit it so much in life as to fuck it all. Nothing else. You cannot believe that your social success makes you important, because then what you do is live to be an actor and not to act. There are moments in life when it can happen to you and you have a headache, but you learn to relativize yourself. How did you get from Ermua, so far from the country's cultural centers, to stardom? Although my father is Basque, we were emigrants and I think that speaking Spanish in the Basque Country, in a town with a lot of immigration and when Basque Batua still didn't exist, helped me to start acting. A few boys did Bachelor's degrees and the others studied trades at the Armory School. For a farm boy, who lived in the mountains and wanted to be an electrical expert, it was very difficult to enter, because it was essential to speak good Castilian and they did not. So the Castilians of the north were more appreciated. In the community and at school, language was a plus for me. And many kids from the town came to my house to learn Spanish and we had a very free system of representation, we almost acted to teach and understand each other. My mother accentuated, sang, made jokes ... Maybe that is where my vocation comes from, being a maketo and what it implied. You have lived the last 40 years of Spanish cinema, have bullying and abuse been so common that denounced the #MeToo? It was an established behavior of abuse of power and was very widespread, that's for sure. The sexual ... When I arrived in Madrid, the show we kissed each other in the mouth. I greeted Paco Rabal or Africa Prat with a kiss on the mouth. I went to a show of Loles León, put my pussy 10 centimeters from my face and put a banana. At that time the boundaries were blurred. But the #MeToo is given at the moment when these extreme situations are blurred in a continuous line and normalize. It is not a movement against sexual abuse but against the predominant abuse, it is more cultural than sexual. When women have been silent for so long before this it is for something and the least is to grant them the benefit of the doubt. There have been very extreme cases, they have taken a long time to say because it was not easy and they have every right to report it now. Have you noticed a change in behavior on the part of men? Of course, but not only in the cinema, in society. I go for a quick walk, not to run, and now I see, on a daily basis in the morning, many parents with their children in the park. That is new. These children will be educated in a different way from ours, more egalitarian. With the feminist movement I see a result and that is what matters. Speaking of parents. Your son is an actor and you have lived all the vital ups and downs that the profession fosters. Are you worried? As with any profession, what worries you is that you do well, be it an actor or a lawyer. Jon lives the profession in a very different way than I lived at his age. It is not the number 1 in your life. For him, privacy, their relationship, creating a family are more important ... My son has had a huge success with Instinct and it is the moment he is most hidden, he has a desperate representation office. His healthy idea is to compete against success and not get carried away. Did you let yourself go? Then the cinema forced you. It was the time of Pilar Miró and the directors were subsidized. The grant went to the directors. Then, movies were constantly made. And as I said before, my age were Resines, Puigcorbé and me, because Antonio Banderas or Juan Echanove are younger, so it was such a pressure that, as much as you said no, as they offered you five a year you ended up doing Minus two. And at that time a rejection always left marks. A movie was going to be made in Bilbao with grants and someone who had played a lot of money in it, and if you said no ... be careful, be careful. It was a world much more false than now. You had to be in all Saraites, be diplomatic in your decisions, smile and be nice. Now I am infinitely freer to decide. You were three and you were the handsome one. For the gallant papers there would not be much competition ... Sure, of course. Puigcorbé was a great comedian with an intelligence that I have not seen another actor. Resines was the human thing, the friend with whom you have been dislodging yourself for 40 years, the guy who comes to a shoot and releases: "Gentlemen, quickie I'm losing money." And I had the other. In Time of Silence Vicente Aranda told me: "Boy, why do you think I give you the role? Because you are the only handsome and now to see if you can make the character." And he was right.

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