Joaquín Cosío (Tepic, 61 years old) looks for the new tenant of his house, a small five-month-old cat, and makes sure that it is not causing damage.
Cosío is a tall, corpulent man with graying hair.
The most distinctive thing is his voice, thick and imposing, which breaks with his kindness.
The talk begins with the name of Luis Estrada, his old friend and director who has given him some of the most memorable roles of his career: a homeless man in
A Wonderful World
(2006), a heartless hitman named Cochiloco in
El Infierno
(2010).
.
Now another one will come.
The script is already on his work table.
The actor interrupts his reading to attend to this interview, but the character is being built right now in his main room.
Ask.
When you look for Joaquín Cosío you always find an actor and poet.
Answer.
It is something very curious, it is not something that I promote because I have a lot of respect for the poetic world.
It sounds very pretentious to me to say that I am a poet.
I accept that I am an actor, yes.
Poetry, I studied.
I was in a literary workshop and I have three books published.
But calling myself a poet, in a country of poets, sounds very pretentious to me and I always keep a little distance.
Q.
Is there a relationship between the histrionic part and poetry?
A.
There is a connection, which is the creative event, where your head somehow suffers something, like a
blackout,
and you give space to another thought, another flow of ideas.
Contrary to what is thought, that acting is an expressive activity only, in general acting is also a mental work, the character is also in how that individual thinks.
There is a whole theory about it.
And if I'm honest with you, in my creative search, poetry is a personal satisfaction, a mental delight that I seek, and acting activity is a confrontation with your own self, a confrontation with your own mental structure.
Break yourself, break yourself so that another can enter, and that is complicated.
Q.
And what inspires you to enter that mental space?
A.
Well, if we talk about the poetic fact, I would look for, as some poets have said, the poetry of small things, of the everyday world, the ordinary... It would inspire me to talk about the day, about light, obviously about love. , which always occupies an important part of our lives, in any of its versions, including heartbreak as well.
But what nourishes me is daily life.
As an actor I love walking and observing, it is an activity that I have done since I was very young, it is a kind of vocation and born curiosity, I go down the street wondering what is that man thinking?
How does he walk? This man comes angry, that firm step he has, he tells me that he comes angry.
I like to build stories, other people's stories, and that is what has somehow nourished me a lot to build characters or suddenly write a poem.
Q.
You are someone very kind and your characters are violent. Do you identify with your characters or are they completely different?
A.
Cinema is image.
My image is not necessarily that of a gallant, nor a doctor of souls, nor a saint.
My image is the opposite;
I am a robust man, my gesture is stern, strong.
Suddenly I can handle the energy of violence very quickly, so that somehow pulls you in, the director looks for that.
A
casting
is a wink of eyes between an actor and a director, which happens in seconds, a kind of very, very quick meeting.
Well, I have a constitution that has pushed me towards violent characters in most of my works, but as you say, I also have an expression that is friendly.
I am an absolutely peaceful and family man.
This conciliation between two profiles is what has helped me build ambiguous characters, who have contradictions in that way of being violent, but at the same time having loyalties, friends and codes.
Q.
What is the most difficult thing for you about the character?
A.
To be very frank, all the roles, without wanting to be grandiloquent or rhetorical, but all the roles are a gamble.
First, to convince a director that he is the one who is carefully listening to you, seeing all the details, and that is a very difficult job.
Part of the actor's job is to have the strength to endure the display, and not just the display, the trial.
It's very difficult for an actor, unless you do it like me, who thinks, this is what I like, let's see what comes out, see if the director likes it, if he doesn't like it, then that's it.
No way.
That's the only way I can explain having been filming in England, with James Bond, or in Arizona, with Johnny Depp.
I always thought, I'm going to do what I've always done, which is have a good time, have fun, look for fun.
If I have fun, people have fun, it is a law, perhaps the first law of interpretation.
Q.
That contradicts that phrase that the character must be suffered.
A.
Actors are apprehensive.
For example, when I was already traveling to film in London, everything was dizzying.
They talked to me and I said, 'I don't know English.'
I didn't speak any of the language, it's still not one of my qualities.
But I told myself 'I'm not going to suffer, I'm going to have fun, I'm going to have a good time and turn the interaction between us into something fun, something that allows us all to have fun, and that's how it has always been.'
There are complex characters, for example in
The Lone Ranger
I had very complicated moments because Gore Verbinski, the director, is very bold and thinks that all actors are bold, so he wanted me to jump from one car to another on a moving train.
I said no, I'm not going to do that, if I fall, I kill myself or break my spine, and he acts like it's nothing, because he's a risk director, and his actors are all the same, they follow him, but I No.
I stayed there because of a casting that he saw and that he liked.
I am an actor who has had more luck than talent.
Q.
Is there a character you would like to play?
A.
Vulnerable characters, exactly the opposite of what I seem like.
I really appreciate a film by Gustavo Moheno, which was called
Lessons for Canallas
, which is a comedy.
He summoned me to be a swindler, a scoundrel, but in comedy.
I appreciate that because it allows me to say, I am not just a thug or a hitman.
In fact, after the success of Cochiloco I received tons of scripts and calls to play similar roles.
I say, I need a job, but I'm not going to work on something that doesn't have an artistic ambition, that doesn't have an originality.
They were all copies of Cochiloco, I'm not interested.
El Cochiloco already existed.
There are an infinite number of characters that have to be played.
There is a play called
Woyzeck
, with a sick character who is used for experiments.
I would like the fragility of that character, but it is very difficult for him to aspire to that because I just don't look like it.
I tell you, cinema is image.
Q.
Have you never thought about directing yourself?
R.
Note that no.
Management is another discipline, another sector that I deeply respect.
On one occasion, still in Ciudad de Juárez, a small group of young people told me 'he is directing us for a play.'
Man, I didn't even know what to do, how do you say no to an actor?
How do you tell him, when that actor believes that he's doing well and that he's delivering?, and you say, 'My God, what is this?'
I mean, I don't have those tools.
Q.
What does a character have to have for you to want to play it?
A.
The first contact you have is a dialogue written in words, with punctuation, exclamation points... The first click has to be there, that what you read is fast, that what the character is saying in writing , I heard it, be real.
That's where the first contact comes in, that you listen to him and say, 'this guy is there, I do believe him', that it is credible, that he is speaking truthfully, that what you see is true, because it is not easy.
You read scripts where the characters don't say anything or have no consistency.
The first thing for me is that, to say, this guy is talking.
Then, that the story has complexity, that it has conflict, that it is not a flat and smooth character, that the story has, in addition to my character, other interesting characters, and something happens in the story, in the whole.
Q.
You know violence very closely and interpret it in your characters.
Does this sometimes generate conflict for you when faced with the reality of Mexico?
A.
No, I have never inhibited myself and I have never censored myself in that sense.
I have always bet on what I already told you, this is a character, it is doing it in a profound and arresting way and the more it is linked to what surrounds us called reality, the better for me.
For example,
Narcos
is a series that I love very much because it allowed me to create a character that I liked and enjoyed enormously.
Q.
You are referring to Ernesto Fonseca.
Why did you enjoy it?
R.
Narcos
It has a structure with a great script.
The dialogues, characters and situations were from my point of view formidable, well written, a very good production.
This is cool because there is someone around here who wants to do this very well and those of us who are in this want to do it very well.
There is all the spirit in making that narrative.
Q.
Did you study the character a lot?
A.
Generally I don't like to investigate too much, because suddenly I feel committed to a reality that from my perception should not compete with the reality of fiction.
If you start competing with what was real, there is not much point, from my point of view.
Of course I investigated, in my case the famous Don Neto.
I looked up who he was, I looked up photographs.
There weren't that many, but you quickly walk away.
I'm not going to be a portrait of the character, I'm going to do what the script is proposing.
Q.
When playing these characters in a country like Mexico, are you worried about any consequences against you?
A.
No, I have also decided not to worry about it.
There have been comments that suddenly arrive on the recording set.
But I am making my fiction, I am not committed to reality, I don't want to take a photograph.
I play my character, it's over.
Q.
With Damián Alcázar you have created memorable couples in Mexican cinema.
However, in recent years his off-screen political differences have become more radical.
Has this prevented you from continuing with the formula?
A.
No, notice that we have never had any discussion and much less argued about it.
I tell you with complete frankness that he is also one of the great Mexican actors for me and I always admire his work.
I watch him act on set and I always endorse him.
We may have political differences, but we have never talked about them, because in reality there are no differences in our relationship.
We are actors, we make films or theater and my admiration for him is there.
Our relationship is based on values that are more solid than simple political temporality.
Q.
But you do like to give your opinion and raise your voice on political issues.
A.
Milan Kundera said that “politics is the dirty foam of rivers.”
For me, politics is a deeply questionable, deeply human activity, in the worst of senses.
In the sense of simulation, in the sense of the representation of double-meaning speech that says one thing, but is another.
It is something that I do not respect and I tell you, politicians do not enjoy my sympathy either, I have said it at other times.
The politician is a bad actor.
Q.
Do I understand that you don't like the exercise of power?
A.
Of course power is directly linked to the political activity of the country.
But now there is a speech that apparently would not have to repeat what has been done all the time.
The problem is that now it is more visible, more shocking or more outrageous.
That is, I can't believe that I go to the Historic Center and can't go to the Zócalo because someone has the nerve to close it, and it is the property of all of us.
These details, the authoritarian gestures, are what make me realize that this reality that we now live in is an authoritarian reality, where power has a military presence.
It is impressive that in our country you go to an airport and find soldiers.
In a shopping center there are soldiers, what the hell.
This phrase that military intelligence says, military intelligence does not exist... The military knows how to obey orders, the military cannot be on the street, it is a danger to society.
So those decisions in which I have not participated cause me anguish and provoke indignation.
We are in a moment where Mexico experiences an authoritarian regime, that is, a presence of power beyond our will as individuals.
Q.
When looking at newspapers or newscasts, do you find your characters or movies reflected?
A.
Of course, Mexican reality is much stronger than Mexican fiction.
The daily exercise of life in Mexico is an always surprising fiction.
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