Amaia Salamanca: "More and more conservative people are expressing themselves in Spanish cinema... Not publicly, but privately"

• Blanca Suárez "It is taken for granted that all actresses have suffered harassment and it is not true"

Amaya Salamanca

.

Madrid, 1986. After a few years on

to dedicate more time to her three children with the businessman Rosauro Varo, in 2022 she has not stopped and is now starring

, a blockbuster in English based on the novel by Arturo Perez-Reverte.

Yeah, it's being intense.

is surely the biggest project I've ever worked on and the first time I've played a character in English, which has cost me the most.

No, no.

That's what one believes, but if you don't practice it, in the end you lose it and I was rusty.

I studied 20 years ago in the United States, but, of course, I have not used it since then and it has forced me to be even more methodical when preparing the character.

I had a

that helped me and I spent a month working on each sequence, trying to get the intonation correct and not have a very strong Spanish accent.

I think it turned out well, I'm satisfied.

Yes, although, specifically,

I hadn't read it before.

Pérez-Reverte liked the film because I think it follows the book quite well and that has been a relief.

It was a lot of stress that Pérez-Reverte, who doesn't keep quiet and always says what he thinks, thought the movie was horrible or that I wasn't up to the role.

Playing Macarena Bruner as he describes her in the book was a challenge and a terrible pressure, because he imagines finding you a critical column of his after seeing you.

But no, he is very supportive of the film and it seems that he is happy, so, hey he, I've already taken that off.

Can be.

It often seems that we ourselves throw stones against our roof and we don't know how to show how beautiful we are, which is a lot.

It gives the feeling that everything we Spaniards do seems wrong to us.

With the movie, for example, it has even been criticized that Rodolfo [Sancho] and I speak in English: "It's just that it's strange to see two Spaniards arguing in English."

I don't know, that's part of creating a character and for that we've rehearsed, we've looked each other in the eye, we've laughed, we've made jokes... We've gone through a lot of phases that have brought us to the moment of filming .

Why not be proud that two Spanish actors can work in other languages?

Well, nothing, there are some who don't understand it because the actors and characters are Spanish and the writer, too.

I don't know if when they see

will complain about the Chinese emperor speaking English to all the civilians.

To the Duchess of Alba, but I imagine you're asking about me [laughs]

Now they have left me very calm, but I had a rather overwhelming moment.

I was younger and there was a media boom with me in which I was related to different people, there was speculation about my private life... The worst thing about these situations is that most of the things that have been published about me were lies.

But you are not going to deny anything because that is what they are looking for, that you enter the game and, then, you are already lost.

It is a trap: if you assume that they lie, bad;

if you answer, worse.

But now the pink press sees me already settled, with a family, and they are less interested in me.

Motherhood changes life in general.

The first thing that changes is your perception of life, it makes you suddenly mature because now there is one person, or several, that you have to take care of and you always want to protect them and leave them the best possible legacy.

I thought that I was not going to act in a certain way when I was a mother and, when push comes to shove, you end up acting that way.

So many years saying that I am not going to be my mother, to end up being my mother.

Professionally, yes, of course.

You are already a mother and the roles are different, the looks are different.

But sometimes I doubt if it is an idea with which I limit myself, because within the national sphere people do know that I am a mother, but whoever sees now

in any other country has no idea.

I have a lot of doubts about this topic, because I have the feeling that, now that they know that I am, they only offer me roles as a mother of teenagers, but I don't know if it's just my perception and I'm creating a problem that doesn't exist.

Yes of course.

I don't think my children like to see her naked mother on a giant screen and it's weird, because as an actress you shouldn't think about that: you have to get into the role no matter what.

But you know that, sooner or later, your children are going to see it and you don't want them to see you rolling around with another man.

So, I think about it a lot.

If it is justified within the script that there is sex, I consider it.

If it's free, I'm not interested.

It doesn't just happen to me with the world of politics or religion, nor do I post anything about my private life or my family or my children on my social networks.

Of course I have my opinions, but I don't feel that I have to give them so that everyone can judge and comment on what I think.

These are issues that I leave for my most closed, closest sphere.

It's not because I don't position myself, it's because I don't like to expose myself or exhibit myself.

Sure, but more and more people are doing it.

Yes, there was a time when it seemed that you were not part of the group if you did not think like the majority, but I think that more and more conservative people are expressing themselves without anything happening.

Maybe not publicly, but privately yes.

Yes, it has been, but that is why I emphasize that there is a transition.

What happens is that we are very heavy putting labels all the time and it always seems that, if you do not feel like labeling yourself, you are not involved or committed enough.

I don't care, I am who I am and I don't need to join any movement to be accepted.

The person closest to me will know what I think and I don't need the whole world to know.

Feminism as a concept is what it is: I want equality between men and women.

That is why it is absurd to hear that "I am neither a feminist nor a sexist".

What I also believe is that women do not need a push to reach that equality, but rather a job of educating their children.

We have to make them participants in that equality so that they live within it and do not see the difference.

I am a woman who works outside the home and it fills me that my children see that mom is also going to earn money and enjoy her work.

And yet, they still ask me, "Why? Where are you going?"

They continue to see it as more normal in the father and I think that the basis of education is to give our children that vision of equality between men and women.

Contradictory.

Many times you can feel a little slave, like right now.

In addition, the world of social networks has multiplied this: you have to be perfect all the time.

I am concerned that this is the education that we are giving to teenagers now because continuous beauty and filters are not the way one ages, that is not reality.

So in the end it's a contradiction: I want to not be too obsessed with beauty and teach something real, but within my profession we often maximize it and spend many hours on it.

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• Arturo Perez-Reverte

• cinema

• Final Interview