Actor Joaquín Furriel poses for Moncler's spring/summer 2024 campaign in Madrid.Moncler
Joaquín Furriel (Lomas de Zamora, Buenos Aires, 49 years old) would be handing out a prescription in a doctor's office or operating room today if it weren't for the fact that in his family, from "progressive middle class, art is well regarded and culture is something important". When he was 12 years old, educational psychologists at his school evaluated him and said he had "a lot of creativity put in a bad place." They recommended that her parents participate in artistic workshops in painting, writing, music, and acting. "When I was in the acting room I realized that I didn't want it to end anymore because I was having a great time," she says over a video call from the summer heat of a house 110 kilometers from her native Buenos Aires.
Furriel's fate was also the result of a cyclical symptomatology that affects his country, Argentina, every couple of decades, such as hyperinflation between 1989 and 1990, which changed the perspective on social ascent related to the professional career one chose. "Pursuing an artistic career wasn't so strange anymore," he admits. If he had continued with the degree in Medicine, he would not be able to be now, at 49 years old, boasting more than 50 acting credits between film, television and theater, a figure that will continue to increase in 2024.
This 2024 also begins with the actor starring in Moncler's spring/summer 2024 campaign. Moncler is the down jacket brand that has jumped to the front page of fashion in the last decade. Furrier is the image of its Collection line, a proposal of silent luxury with garments that are committed to urban elegance. The campaign for the new season, which launches worldwide today, was launched in Madrid. "Argentina and Spain are totally involved in my DNA. It's not a country that's foreign to me. I feel a lot of familiarity when I'm in Madrid. The campaign has that idyll with the urban and Madrid is a city that I love, because walking gets you everywhere. I like the theatrical life it has, the museums, the restaurants, the bars. That air of strangers forming a family with people from other places." Regarding the campaign garments, he has a special preference for shirts and pants. "They are very light and very comfortable. The jackets have a combination of materials that makes them visually light, yet very warm."
Actor Joaquín Furriel poses for Moncler's spring/summer 2024 campaign in Madrid.Moncler
The actor made his debut in the theatre at the age of 15 in the theatre group of Almirante Brown – the neighbourhood where he lived – and studied at the Conservatory of Dramatic Art. He starts 2024 with his sights set on his next projects. One of them is The Smell of Freshly Cut Grass, by director Celina Murga, who stars alongside the Oscar-nominated Mexican actress for Roma (2018), Marina de Tavira, and which is executive produced by Martin Scorsese. The film, still in post-production, features Pablo (Furriel), a university professor, who becomes romantically involved with a student. Meanwhile, Natalia (De Tavira), a university professor, becomes romantically involved with a student. Two parallel stories, similar but different.
Furriel also has two other films this year, Rest in Peace, directed by Sebastián Borenzstein and produced by Chino and Ricardo Darín, and A Silent Death, a thriller set in the 2014s that was filmed entirely in Patagonia. The Argentinian actor has been able to tailor his career to suit himself and on his own terms. In the theatre he has participated in plays such as Hamlet or Final de partida, by the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, in which he was able to share the stage with one of the most prodigious actors in Argentina, Alfredo Alcón, who died in 83. "Doing that play with Alfredo, which I knew was probably the last, I experienced it as a love letter to our profession. And it was also very stimulating to discover that an <>-year-old actor who is dealing with finitude chose precisely a play like Endgame, where there is no support after death. I really enjoyed accompanying Alfredo at that time," he recalls.
Actor Joaquín Furriel poses for Moncler's spring/summer 2024 campaign in Madrid.Moncler
Previously, Furriel was a television heartthrob in popular telenovelas in Argentina such as Verano del 98′ (2000) or Jesús, el heredero (2004), his first leading role on television two decades ago, and also as a lead actor in the three seasons (between 2017 and 2023) of a great HBO television bet, the police thriller El jardín de bronce, which ended last year. "I'm thankful that I was able to be the actor I dreamed of in my teens. To be able to imprint my life, my identity, what I liked. I really like to make fiction for different socio-cultural levels, and at the same time to be in projects that are also very demanding in terms of quality," he says.
Furriel highlights the time he spent working on The Bronze Garden, because it was another time for Latin American television in which there were no such series and when starring in a production for HBO "was the most important thing that could happen to you." Playing Fabián Danubio, an architect who begins a desperate search for his daughter when she disappears without a trace, opened the doors to a series of opportunities in films and series such as The Kingdom (2021), available on Netflix, or Argentine-Spanish co-productions such as The Lighthouse of the Orcas or One Hundred Years of Forgiveness (both 2016).
"I really like thrillers as a viewer and as an actor: psychological thrillers and crime thrillers, they're always interesting. As I am an actor with a theatrical background, I am interested in capturing the director's idea in terms of the climate he wants to create and from there I start working on my character. I really like to try to find subtleties, so that the interpretation beats the personality I have as an actor," he says.
That concern to create a wide range of actors has included other genres such as comedy in El duelo (2022) or the series Robo Mundial (2023), on Star+, about a father who tries to steal the World Cup, after the elimination of the Argentine team in the qualification for the next World Cup in order to rejoin the team in the championship and thus be able to take his son to him. A production that, curiously, premiered coinciding with Argentina's victory in the World Cup in Qatar. "Some people tell me it would be good to have a second season before next World Cup, because it brought good luck," he jokes.
Furriel, a self-confessed Racing de Avellaneda fan, says that there is something in the Argentine DNA that makes football unite them in a special way: "It is very difficult to explain what is happening in Argentina with the phenomenon of football and few experiences have been as beautiful as the World Cup. To have won at such a difficult time in the country [in reference to the economic crisis that has been going on for years] meant that there were five million people of all socio-cultural levels, hugging, crying, emotional, and the series had to do with that."
For years, Furriel's career has been projected internationally, making Madrid a second home. Taxi to Gibraltar (2019), with Dani Rovira, and, especially, One Hundred Years of Forgiveness were the films that introduced him to Spanish audiences. Although he did not set himself the goal of entering the European market, nor a possible leap to Hollywood, Furriel does believe in synergy, in how the action of different causes can achieve a greater effect or result. In fact, it was The Tree of Blood, directed by Julio Medem and released in 2019, that opened the door for him to become the new face of Moncler. "It's unbelievable that a film I made five years ago could have gotten me to star in this campaign," he concludes.
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