Roberto Álvarez: “Being an actor is not such a big deal”

I interview Roberto Álvarez after having seen him on stage playing Martin Dysart, the phlegmatic and tormented psychiatrist from

, and, when I catch a glimpse of him arriving from afar at the hotel where we stayed, I fear that whoever is going to end up on the couch of the uncomfortable questions be me and not him.

I'm only relatively wrong.

He responds cordially to questions, but sometimes he goes through the hills of Gijón, where he grew up, the son of a wealthy and enlightened family, before arriving in Madrid to exercise his brain by studying engineering and his body by learning dance “too late to arrive to be great,” he says.

Let's go by parts.

Teleco engineer and dancer.

How is that eaten?

I don't explain it either.

I

to read the catechism in my first communion and they didn't catch me.

Then, at school, I wanted to be in the rondalla and it was also a disaster.

Until, in Madrid, at the residence hall, I made a short film with some audiovisual colleagues by pure chance, they chose me to do

in theater, I got the bug, and I set up the Dance Theater.

I spent eight years wanting to leave it because I thought I would never be able to make a living from it.

I did not have a vocation as a child actor.

In other words, he is an actor despite himself.

Totally.

For a long time, I have not been so much an actor, as I have

an actor.

Until the profession decided for me.

I have the mentality of an engineer, what I want is to solve things.

I am a solver, an achiever.

At the Dance Theater I was also a producer, it was very difficult to make everything fit together to survive and, when I was about to throw in the towel, at 42 years old, they offered me

en el cine and then I have made 32 films and

, the most popular series of the time in Spain.

Gifts of life.

I see him very unbelieving.

Certain colleagues of yours talk about what they suffer and enjoy the 'journey' of their work.

There is no doubt that some characters remove you.

Now, Dysart has confronted me with certain crossroads.

Imagine that an Australian comes, or a beautiful and special Australian, he offers you to go surfing in Australia, and you have a partner.

He removes your entrails, but you stay home.

That's what the work talks about, at what point you give up passion, to live things, you cry for it, but you accept it because life is like that.

In other words, you also 'travel' on stage.

This job floods you with questions and emotions, but, come on, nothing that can't happen to you reading an 800-page book.

My advice is that you should not give the profession more than it gives you.

I don't have that “oh, being an actor is transcendental” thing.

Being an actor isn't that big of a deal either.

It is being a storyteller who seeks to share emotions.

If you do well, they applaud you, and if you don't, they kick you.

To me, as Fernán Gómez said, what I would love is to be a Marquis and have tea served to me.

Or it could be perfectly cook.

What passions have you given up?

I am a very passionate person, perhaps with an excess of sensitivity and, that, which is essential for this profession, leads you to be a great romantic and, at some stage of my life, in order not to bother or harm anyone, let's say that I have holding the reins, playing with the simile of the horse of

.

What I told you about the Australian or Australian.

I mean, she was Australian.

No no no.

[laughs]

Where he was from?

I can't tell you because my wife reads this.

No, seriously, it's not about me, this happens to everyone.

It can be a look in a cafeteria, a possibility, stories that you have not lived, life changes that you have not had.

You get away from me all the time.

Hahaha, of course.

But I think so.

Anthony Hopkins, who did Dysart in his day, said that the most beautiful thing in his career was making the final statement, where it is said that you will have left the passion, you will have stopped living things, but that's life, and that's fine so be it.

Neither hot nor cold?

Isn't it better to be dead to live like this?

If you want to go to Australia with your Australian or Australian, that's up to you.

Is 66 years past the midlife crisis?

I thought it was the 40's. Me, crisis, nothing.

I'm great.

Every day I do an hour of gymnastics, boxing.

I was referring more to the 'coconut'.

I have no time.

I get up at 5, I'm going to record the series

, I'm happy there, I come home, I try to make the food, if I can.

And, in the afternoon, I go to the theater.

I feel very alive.

I have no ailments except paresthesia caused by the bloody vaccine.

My face and fingertips are still stiff and I'm very anti-vaccine.

Your opinion is clear to me.

I said it just so you would know and be careful.

'Equus', with its theme and its nudity on stage, caused a scandal at its premiere almost 50 years ago.

Now it is almost naive?

We are back to that time a bit.

So, in the 70s, parallel to the scandal, there was a movement of freedom, of opening the mind, of experimenting and learning from everything.

From surfing in Australia.

Now, we live in a time when we can't say almost anything, because if they don't crush you.

In the United States abortion is prohibited, in Iran girls are killed for removing the veil, we live a nuclear threat for spurious reasons.

Nudity on stage is beautiful, but there is even someone who bothers him.

I don't think so.

If you could, would you choose the role of your partner

No. It's just that you look, in my career there are two theatrical productions that have marked me and are the pinnacle of my profession.

The one in

, and this

.

Why think what could have been, if this has been.

In other words, from now on, everything is already downhill.

LOL.

No. That's what I thought after

came to me

.

I have an angel up there.

We always have Australia.

LOL.

HORSE-BREAKER

Roberto Álvarez (Gijón, 66 years old), has been on stage since he was 22, when he began acting as a dancer while studying telecommunications engineering.

The

of the creatures of

, the mythical television series that starred with Ana Obregón in the early two thousand and that launched him to massive popularity after 40, has acted in dozens of films and theatrical productions where, In addition, he works as a producer.

He now plays Martin Dysart, the charismatic psychiatrist in the once scandalous play 'Equus' at the Infanta Isabel theater in Madrid.

In the play, he argues that it is better to tame passions than to succumb to them and risk tragedy.

In real life, he doesn't know, he doesn't answer.

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