Ginés García Millán
.
Puerto Lumbreras, 1964. One of the great actors of character in our country has become a world star with the villain of the Mexican
Who Killed Sara?
, the most-watched series on Netflix this spring.
After a 30-year career, 31 movies, 31 series and 17 plays, suddenly a hit. Impress or nothing surprises you anymore?
Success must be taken with joy and also with a certain distance. It is not true that one has seen everything, because you have to maintain the capacity for wonder. Life surprises you at every moment and in every project. And now this has come to me, so welcome. The truth is that when I read the script it already seemed to me that it had something. Normally you just look at your character, but here I started reading chapters and I said, "This is interesting, I want to know who it was, what happened here." Sometimes you have to pay attention to intuition, but even so, I never imagined that it was going to be this ball. No way.
Is it impossible to predict what will triumph?
Very difficult. Each project, each series, each movie, has its soul and sometimes circumstances arise. We spent a whole year filming the series, we stopped due to the pandemic, I had to return without knowing if we were going to be able to finish even the first season ... All that has influenced. When I had to return to Mexico to finish filming, I left my family, my parents, my children here, even in a difficult moment. I think all that has influenced, in some way, I don't know how, in the series. The fact is that, whatever it is, they have created a product that is being liked. What can we do! For when there isn't. Because in this profession you spend your life on projects that you think are going to succeed and, most of the time, nothing ever happens. This time it has happened.
Does this boom in popularity coupled with a hit Netflix series bother you?
It's getting over me a bit, especially with social media. I wear it as I can. Suddenly it is multiplied by a thousand, I want to serve everyone and there is no way. I am overwhelmed with this that I know is bullshit, but the list is getting longer and longer and I'm really going to get older without finishing answering.
You, in addition, have always moved at the ideal level of fame: they know you, but they do not overwhelm you.
Yesterday I had an interview on Instagram Live with an American television and people from India, Turkey, Africa entered there. And it makes a very big impression on you. To give you an example, my first moment of popularity was with
Periodistas
, but it was something local, tiny, only in Spain. Now it is the whole world, but it is bearable. In fact, we like it, that's what we became actors for: so that people love us. If someone stops me and recognizes my work, it is a joy, because that is what we are for.
This boom in series and platforms, is it sustainable?
I hope it is not a bubble. If the platforms are useful for anything, it is to generate industry and the key is that that industry is maintained, that we put all the concrete that is necessary in the foundations to prop up and, that if crisis comes, we can maintain the industry that is being generated. That's wonderful, but you have to create it well. It is not true that now all the actors are working or that all those who work do so in good conditions. And those are things that must be corrected.
You were a heartthrob and you are becoming an official villain.
I already have several masters in evil. I have been lucky enough to play villains in series that worked and had the affection of the public such as
Heirs
,
Isabel
or this one. I must be good at being bad and look, I'm a good guy.
You will hide something.
I think not. What happens is that it is fun to dress up as your opposite. In addition, one is also surprised by the characters. They allow you to delve into yourself, to delve into the human race, into what we are. I believe that we are neither good nor bad, that depending on how life takes you, you can react in one way or another.
José María Pou says that being an actor makes you a better person because no other profession puts you in the place of others so much.
I definitely agree. With acting sometimes you theorize too much. When you are young, you become very closed in your way of understanding: 'This is so, you have to prepare the characters in this way ... ". Everything is black or white. Then you realize that in this job everyone does the same. That can. No more.
You are relaxing the Method, right?
You have to relax everything in life. The only thing you can't relax with is having fun. I give myself to my characters and I like them, I try not to judge them, I try to have fun. And one thing that I really do believe: projects go well or badly due to factors that are often uncontrollable, but the great vital defeat is not having a good time working, although sometimes there are people who insist that you do not achieve it. Our raw material is our entrails, our heart, our body. We work with who we are and you cannot miss the opportunity to have a good time. Also, you soon discover that nothing ever happens in this life. Have fun and we'll see what happens.
Many actors seem to be living in pain. Is there too much intensity in the profession?
Yes. To suffer, endure pain and wounds, there is already life. This profession must be lived with the utmost joy. Of course, sometimes things go wrong, but in those moments I always apply a phrase from
Juan Belmonte
, from Chaves Nogales, which is wonderful: "Total, if in two hours it is night." That is my philosophy.
You have triumphed as a prestigious secondary, does it bother you not to have made more protagonists?
I have also done, but those projects have been less successful. This is life. I have had many principals in theater and television, but I have that pending subject with the cinema and I still hope that it reaches me: a great
protagonist
where I really beat the copper. Finding that character that exactly matches the actor you are at that moment. It has happened to me in theater many times, recently with
Vania
, but in cinema I am still waiting for it ..
Are there roles now that you would have been unable to do 10 years ago, beyond due to age issues?
Totally, because he understood fewer things in life, he didn't have the job. When you start doing theater, for example, you always want to give your all in every scene. And it is a mistake, you have to measure. It's like a long-distance runner who knows when to push, when to reserve strength, how to hold your breath ... What makes you know yourself in this trade is time, no more, no less. You learn by running, you learn by working.
There is a recent historical figure that you have done twice: Adolfo Suárez. A lot of responsibility there.
Yes, one on television and one on film. Even if you don't want to, they end up giving you that feeling of responsibility. Everyone tells you: "Damn, watch out, uh, let's see what you do." The risk when you play these characters that everyone knows is that, instead of playing, you imitate. If you go to the imitation, you lose. That's where the interesting thing, and it was my intention, although I don't know if I succeeded, is to understand him, put yourself in his shoes in many wonderful situations that he experienced and that he knew how to move forward, in many cases very well. It has to live through you, try to give you humanity. It's not about whether you look more or less, you have to move, which is what fiction is about. The viewer has to feel empathy, if you haven't lost.
Do you see potential for a political series in the current landscape?
The
Gürtel
is the great movie or the great series that we have yet to make. Besides, I ask myself for a character there because I see it very clearly for me: Francisco Correa (laughs). You see the resemblance, right? That I ask.
You were talking about the viewer. Are you actors capable of acting without thinking about it?
When you are in a project you want to sell it and make it like it, because if you don't eat it with potatoes. Now, once you are acting in a theater, you are performing a
Hamlet
, you can't think of doing it to like it. There are such great characters that you have to let yourself go. Acting is like mud, it is emotionally staining yourself to the best of your soul. And that's what I try. What do I get it? Well. Not? Make a mistake, nothing happens. Working thinking about the result does not work and that does not mean that you do not think about the public: what the public wants is truth and it delivers.
You were going for a serious footballer.
Yes Yes. In my town we couldn't do anything other than watch TV or play football and I was a very good goalkeeper. I was at Murcia and then at Valladolid, in a very good youth team where many made it to the First Division and even to the National Team: Eusebio, Juan Carlos, Torrecilla ... I got to be called up with the Spanish youth team.
And at what point did you trade the ball for acting?
I used to play soccer, but then I would watch
Studio 1
and I wanted to be like those wonderful actors. Like Bódalo, like Rodero ... I wanted to be that in life and, when I already started in the Valladolid subsidiary, I made that decision and got it right. I was also helped by a coach who told me that my sensitivity did not match football, because he would bring me the newspaper and read books.
Your family had a hotel and you grew up there. For a child, was it like living in a movie?
Totally.
The hotel was my window to the world. You sat there and saw everything.
In my generation, we worked from a very young age: I made coffees uploaded in an old Coca-Cola box, I helped to set up the dining rooms, to clean, to wash ... When I was 14 years old, I did my first night watch and spent the night at the hotel. National-340 Barcelona-Cádiz.
I saw everything and wanted to go out and see that world that visited me for a while.
When the Germans came those with the motorcycles, the beards and those wonderful looks;
the universe of commercials;
the gamblers, that they settled there and mounted gambling ... See the Swedish women!
It was wonderful.
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