Ernesto Alterio: "My mother still asks my sister Malena and me to buy a taxi"

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• Interview Chimpún Greta Fernández: "It is very nice to be a prestigious actress, but with that I don't eat"

Almost every Sunday, a wonderfully together family gathers in a house in Madrid.

The father, Héctor, and the children, Ernesto and Malena, are successful actors.

The mother, Angela, is a psychoanalyst.

Despite the absolutely consolidated careers of the three, she does not trust.

"My mother still seriously asks my sister and me to buy a taxi, that

and that, when the bad cows come, I make the night and Malena, the day ", bursts out laughing

(Buenos Aires, 1970) while sipping a coffee on a terrace overlooking the Gran Vía.

Paco León is there, his co-star in

, the movie that he is now premiering, who stops us for a moment pointing to a giant poster of Carlos Alcaraz in his underpants: "He's the tennis player, right? How can you be so strong ?".

Ernesto shrugs and eats a strawberry.

It is the one that puts order there among so much madness.

The truth is that we had a great time together, we really enjoyed being with the family, the four of us, it's a joy.

It is part of our DNA in some way.

Over the years, I've developed a mix of having two rhythms.

I feel 100% Spanish, I grew up here and have lived here all my life, but I also connect 100% with the Argentine idiosyncrasy.

It's funny because that part of Argentina, which is there, is not usually seen, but at times I feel that something remains in my way of moving through life.

It has also made it possible for me to work there and I am an Argentine there.

I love that, because it allows me to recover all that heritage, investigate about it and fantasize who I would have been if we hadn't had to go into exile.

I am very grateful for that possibility of connecting with two rhythms.

I feel like a wealth.

Yes Yes.

There was nothing to do.

That innate desire was irremediably imposed.

Not being an actor was a denial that I had, although on the other hand I was always playing theater.

If you ask 12 or 14 year old Ernesto what he wanted to be, he would tell you neurologist.

That was what I liked, researching the brain, and in fact I studied pure sciences, but suddenly, boom, I started to get little by little into the theater and I felt that it was an engine that dragged me along.

Until then I had to force myself to do things and I discovered that acting was something that took me, that pulled me.

It gave me respect and it scared me to assume that legacy and that pressure of being my father's son because they beat me up a lot as a child: "Are you going to be an actor like your father?"

I always denied it, but genetics took over.

No, I have never felt that way because both Malena and I have been lucky that my father has not been an invasive father.

He has always respected our decisions very much.

What's more, as you said before, he wanted us to dedicate ourselves to something else.

To anything else.

Yes Yes.

He didn't want this at all, but the poor thing had to accept it and twice.

Two fingers.

He was very sensitive to the difficulties that this profession has because, in addition, he had it especially difficult having to start over from scratch in another country.

He did not want us to live with that uncertainty.

Hence my mother and the taxi.

To know more

The final interview.

Héctor Alterio: "At 92 years old, I have to continue working to be able to pay the bills"

• Writing: IÑAKO DÍAZ-GUERRA Madrid

Héctor Alterio: "At 92 years old, I have to continue working to be able to pay the bills"

The final interview.

Malena Alterio: "Fame overwhelmed me a lot, I avoided rush hour, I didn't want to go to clubs or go out at night"

• Writing: IÑAKO DÍAZ-GUERRA Madrid

Malena Alterio: "Fame overwhelmed me a lot, I avoided rush hour, I didn't want to go to clubs or go out at night"

That is intrinsic to all actors to a greater or lesser extent.

I am very, very, happy, very grateful and I consider myself privileged to have had some continuity of work.

I look back and, damn, being able to live well and with the stability of what I love is a luxury.

Because I know what the reality of my profession is, where the actors who can live by being actors do not even reach 10%.

It's a barbarity.

I have been very lucky and even so I have had years of low work volume in which you have to do what comes your way, whether you like it or not.

It is what it is.

For this reason, I tell those who are starting out in this that what sustains you is your desire to act, you have to hold on very tightly to that so as not to sink into the bad phases.

I feel that now young people get into actors carried away more by being famous than by passion, and that is punctured immediately.

Well, there was a turning point there where I became more well known, but it wasn't an

overnight

I felt that I had already come a long way and I was not surprised.

I was glad to suddenly feel that what I was doing connected with others and I was amused that very diverse people approached me with an extraordinary familiarity.

They included me in an intimate way in circles of people I didn't know and that gave me a closeness with people that I really enjoyed.

No, I never felt overwhelmed.

Actually, I felt that more with Malena when she did

and it was the bombshell that she was.

You were with Malena and it looked like Mick Jagger.

It was a bit unbearable, but that has never happened to me.

It is a job that we have to do and there is no more.

I have realized, better late than never, how much growing up in a very patriarchal society has influenced me.

It is time to question all those stagnant structures in which we were embedded as children and it is not difficult for me to assume or do so.

All men have to review ourselves, it is evident.

Yes, yes, there are many who resist.

I suppose that giving up your privilege and assuming parity is difficult, but we men have that job now and I am happy to take steps towards it.

.

I was at the gala and I handed out an award, but I wasn't involved in the organization or anything like that.

Since we all came from Animalario and from making those movies that you mentioned before together, that idea stuck, but it wasn't like that.

Okay, yes.

I do not know.

Look, I say 'no to war' all the time.

I say it now and she said it then.

It is horror.

In those days it was time to say it, what I don't know is if that was the best way to do it, I don't know if it was a success.

You have to measure the scope of where and when things are done.

That gala generated some consequences and, when the PP returned to the government, there was a very strong persecution of the entire film industry that was a reaction to that.

Yes, but I think art should be depoliticized... (Ernesto stops, hesitates, and shakes his head).

No, the truth is that this cannot be done.

But if governments should protect and preserve culture beyond any ideological component, they must see it as a common good.

This in France is strictly adhered to and it works wonderfully for them.

Cinema is a cultural transmitter.

There is so much talk about the Spain brand and there is no better way to show it off than to transmit to the world the rich culture that we have.

It paid dearly, but not only our group, but the profession in general.

There was a general reprisal from the right towards the actors for the 'No to war'.

I don't know, I want to believe that we all learned from that.

That is why I would like to think more about what unites us than what divides us and work to promote that.

It is difficult, but we are less bad than we think.

Look, I come from Argentina where the division is much more exacerbated, there they talk about 'the crack' and there are super, super conflicting positions.

Well, the World Cup final caught me there and, when they won and I went out into the street, I realized how much people needed to be able to hug each other.

On a symbolic level, for society, being able to give each other a hug is very important.

Even if it's for football.

It is political and it is historical.

Tell something that happened.

Of course you have to do them.

First, to say that I think it's fantastic for Messi to support a movie like this, the guy is a boss.

In addition, the simile is made there: Argentina won the third World Cup and now could win its third Oscar.

And with regard to making films about the Civil War, in Spain there are parts of history that need to be reviewed and reviewed as many times as necessary until that chapter, which has not been finished, is truly closed.

To really turn a page, you have to read it first.

it deals directly with the trials of the Military Junta.

Here Baltasar Garzón tried to do the same with Francoism, to review it legally and put the cards on the table, and they destroyed it.

I feel that it is important for families and for the whole of society to know where your dead are and what really happened.

There are people who have not been able to grieve, do not know where they are buried, Spain is full of mass graves and it would help us all a lot to face that.

And the cinema must count it until it is done.

Help, help, but I've worked it.

I was paranoid about this issue because my father was practically bald at the age of 20.

So I said to myself: "That's not going to happen to me, whatever it is."

And I've been taking care of it non-stop since I was 20.

They say that gray hair doesn't fall out, so the worst should be over by now.

I hope it's not a myth.

But, beyond my hair, the years have changed me, it's inevitable.

It changed me, first and foremost, being a father.

That gave me a much bigger perspective of where we are.

Now witnessing my parents' old age and having a teenage daughter gives you perspective on where to position yourself and gives you the measure of what is important and what is not.

And the important thing has to do with affection, with caring for people and with knowing that we are here passing through.

We are all going to die and accepting it gives you some peace of mind.

I have lost my fear.

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