Javier Cámara: “Society is not rotten. Kindness wins by a landslide "

The mystery of normal people is one of the great enigmas that Javier Cámara is attached to in life. The key to an actor, like him, who is clear that he will not play a hero or a villain on the screen. On the other hand, due to his physique, his bonhomie, his character, and his gifted empathy, this 54-year-old from La Rioja can specialize in those types of characters that pass by on the street and perhaps we do not look at them, but they hide within himself a world, some inner struggles, some anguish and some feats that push them to fight to survive from the time they get up until they go to bed. Cámara understands them, observes them, embodies them, appropriates them, as lineages such as those of José Luis López Vázquez or Alfredo Landa did in their day, that generation that has later given way to what he calls his artistic grandchildren:neither more nor less than those in charge of representing that gene on the screen. But, in his case, in a globalized way and extending kindness to territories such as Colombia, where under Fernando Trueba he has given life to Héctor Abad Gómez in

The oblivion that we will be

.

The film, based on the book by Héctor Abad Faciolince, tells the story of a martyr doctor in Medellín during the lead years.

So the fight and commitment of people like him was based on something as simple as saving lives against certain bacteria such as typhus or cholera.

But in a context of systematic violence that returns it to us multiplied in its ethical dimension, but also practical, like a genius focused on doing something as complex and as simple as the right thing.

Question

: Had you already read

The Forgetfulness We Will Be

before you were offered the role?

Answer:

Yes, yes, the amount of concentric circles around that book was tremendous.

When we finished filming

The Queen of Spain

with Fernando Trueba, he and Cristina Huete, his wife, asked me what I was going to do.

I answer that I am going to Colombia to shoot

Narcos

and they tell me to take the

oblivion that we will

be in my suitcase

.

I read it almost entirely on the plane and when a good part of the people I meet, including a university professor from Medellín, arrive, they tell me to watch the documentary that Héctor's daughter, Daniela, made,

Carta a una sombra

, about his grandfather.

That same day I arrived at my hotel and they had sent it to me.

That is Colombia.

P.

Emotional exuberance.

R.

That and what they said about magical realism, which is not magical, it is as is, realism.

When I was shooting the film, people would come up to me asking: "And you are the doctor?"

I answered them no, that he was simply an actor, while I looked at how they said it to me to improve my paisa accent [from Antioquia].

P

.

Until tracing it.

How was your journey to speech?

R.

They are very affectionate and delicate, they speak in a beautiful and delicious way.

I'm not an accent actor, I always thought that that was quite limited.

Maybe I had something left of my saxophonist father to capture them.

I like those who work with them, like Meryl Streep, for example.

Until this role arrived, in which I have broken my soul to make it sound real.

P.

Knowing Dr. Héctor Abad from the memory of others must have been a whole process.

R

.

I was the last to shoot because I was working with Sorrentino on the series

The New Pope.

Then, for months they sent me letters that he wrote to his children and students, radio programs.

But when I truly realized his dimension was when I got there and saw the commitment of the entire technical team, of the actors, of the family, on him.

You had to leave the pavilion high, respect his memory.

I panic.

P.

So much?

R.

We had to tell his whole story and, on the other hand, fulfill the film that Fernando wanted to make.

He was a man with such capacity to transmit love that all his children thought they were his favorites.

And so it should be, without distinction.

Each of the daughters could have told that story and it would also be fascinating.

P

.

Well, that filming had to be faced in a difficult way due to the emotional load.

R.

In that sense it was a bomb.

He released a spigot in all of them.

Children and grandchildren visited us a lot.

Fernando Trueba, who has grown up with eight siblings, doesn't care either.

The first, Hector, who, seeing him excited, imposed a lot on us.

And the grandchildren too.

One of them asked me: "Can I hug you?"

He started crying on my shoulder and asking: "Aba, aba, how I miss you!"

Héctor Abad Gómez is very much alive.

Q.

Your story represents the best not only of Colombia, but of Latin America.

In the cinema and in the series, that continent is tinged with blood and violence without even telling half of what happens there.

Don't we need more movies like that and less

Narcos

?

R.

After filming

Narcos

and returning there I thought about it.

I said to myself: "It's good that you give me another opportunity to tell a story with light about Colombia."

The others, dark, promote our vision plagued with prejudices.

You have to work on that other side and stop penetrating evil.

Even when the good guys appear in those stories, they don't bother to delve into the reasons why someone is a good person because they get in the way of action.

As the goodness was less and less interesting.

"After filming 'Narcos' and when I got back there I thought about it. I said to myself:' It's good that they give me another opportunity to tell a story with light about Colombia," recalls Javier Cámara. Javier Salas / EPS

P

.

We could understand the reason for that, but does it have any justification?

R

.

It is difficult to find goodness on screens when the truth is that we are surrounded by great people: grandparents, health workers, policemen who do the right thing.

Society is not rotten.

Quite the opposite.

Goodness beats evil by a landslide and even so it is the great loser.

That is why telling this story is important, because he is not only a good man who stays at home, but puts on his suit and tie and goes out to fix the world.

Q.

Would you have faced this role in the same way if you weren't a father today?

R.

Man, I think so, I don't know.

An actor…

P.

Fatherhood, does not change the way you act?

A.

Yes, like everyone.

It represents the most important thing that can happen to us in life.

When creating a family, the center of attention shifts and you, who are a guy used to being told what good or what bad you do, that self-centeredness of ...

P.

An actor ...

R.

Yes, thanks for the summary, well, the axis is no longer the same, it decreases.

You think of future and present by virtue of others.

It is exciting, although there are times when it scares us.

Especially in times like this.

I am more sensitive now, more fragile, it costs me less to empathize with some emotions, it costs me nothing.

I already empathized, okay, but now with what matters I change the channel.

Q.

Well, you have always been, as an actor, the champion of empathy.

Maybe before he did it in a more feigned way and now it's more authentic?

R.

There are various techniques that lead us to emotion.

Faced with the frivolity with which our profession is sometimes viewed, I think we identify more in that sense with a violinist or a dancer when it comes to pressing feelings.

You can play with many things, from memories to objects or smells to try without hurting yourself.

You have to pull technique.

Well that, as a musician.

Like my father.

It is work and work.

Emotions do not come from infused science, you have to make an effort and for that you leave your soul.

P.

But on you it seems easy.

Empathy gives it a further degree, as a way of being, an appearance, a philosophy.

R.

Well, I've always thought that I was lucky to have been a popular actor since I started.

Of having collaborated with Pajares, with Lina Morgan or in the first

Torrente

with Santiago Segura, and in so many seasons in

Seven lives

.

That brings you closer to the viewer in a very loving way.

There he always played fragile, clumsy characters;

they have given me slaps even in ...

P

.

And in life, have you received many slaps?

R.

No, what goes, what goes.

Well…

Q.

Was he cool at school?

A.

No ... I was very small and deep down where I was there were much funnier people.

Now I meet some from that time who tell me that I was very funny, but it was not like that, they are carried away by a confused feeling.

I had a big school failure, I studied with the priests, then in another mixed one.

Always tiny.

P. Self-

conscious about that?

R

.

No, although it did not attract attention and there were students who were smarter, more handsome and who played football that you shit.

But self-conscious about that, no.

P

.

Well, maybe that's why you knew how to observe very well, feeling like a bunch.

A.

That's why Jack Lemmon fascinates me.

I liked in him that mystery of the man who embodies normal characters.

P.

The most difficult?

A.

I don't know, huh.

The hero must also be difficult to embody.

P

.

More than what Jack Lemmon does in

The Apartment

?

Few things, right?

R.

Yes, well, it is that he or actors like in Spain López Vázquez or Alfredo Landa could embody everything.

They were very alive, I always believed them.

There is a generation of interpreters in those years that we don't know anything about either.

And what's more, I don't care, I don't want to know, so as not to lose the mystery of the unknown in normal people.

On the other hand, they were our family.

It happens today with interpreters similar to those: with Javier Gutiérrez, Carmen Machi, Candela Peña, Eduard Fernández, so many… We are their grandchildren… Those of those people.

That heritage, that responsibility, has fallen to us.

P.

Because in part they represent your country?

R

.

You are right.

And because here the talent comes wrapped in very rare bottles.

Q.

And you, how have the directors treated you?

R

.

Once I was in therapy at a time when I needed to know myself better and the psychologist asked me: "Has yours been a bed of roses?"

I answered yes, how wonderful.

He got pissed off and blurted out: “What are you saying!

Yours has been very difficult.

You have to learn to calibrate that ”.

And he was right!

It balanced it out for me.

Sure, man, this has cost me a lot, it has cost me to get here that you shit.

"I've been late for many things," says Javier Cámara.Javier Salas / EPS

Q.

What happened to you then?

R.

A moment of important personal crisis.

But we all forget bad things.

Or we walk them, in my case, with help.

P

.

To remember, how many do you remember?

A.

No, man!

That this is for

El País Semanal!

P

.

We remember the good ones.

R.

That's why!

People who stop me on the street only remember the good ones.

Fernán Gómez said that until turning 50 an actor should not take stock.

I'm 54 and not so bad.

But it has been a 30-year career and there is room for everything: the good and the bad.

Q.

Let's go back to La Rioja and its town, Albelda de Iregua.

When did you decide that you wanted to be an actor?

R

.

Very late.

I wanted to do Archeology in Zaragoza.

I repeated COU and wanted to leave, the world was coming on me.

But there was a wonderful teacher, Fernando Gil Torner, who had a theater classroom called Teatro Pobre 10 kilometers from my town.

I was with a gibberish in the head and I entered as an escape.

It is true that I then asked myself: “What am I going to be?

Farmer like my father?

Is this really my future?

I'll be here?".

The cherry harvest was screwed up and one had to go out there, to play the saxophone in the villages, in the middle of parties and festivals, between bulls and soccer matches.

P

.

And were you accompanying him?

R.

No, never, but I keep an entire imaginary of that with photographs.

Overall, I went to Madrid to enter the School of Dramatic Art encouraged by that teacher.

My mother gave me 25,000 pesetas, which was not much, and I showed up here with a suitcase and a cardboard box in which she put sausages and cans.

Like Paco Martínez Soria.

I recently passed by the Royal Palace, where the School of Dramatic Art was then, and saw the Hall of Columns.

There I fell off the horse.

I was 19 years old.

I didn't want to get out of there.

I found my place a month.

I did not know if I would become an actor, director or the one who sets the tables, but it was clear to me that I never wanted to leave that place anymore.

P

.

I also imagine that arriving in Madrid would make him feel much freer.

A.

I have been late for many things.

People my age had a huge advantage over me.

In the village he wanted to remain an unconscious child and could not.

He was a quiet, reserved person, I closed myself off.

Adolescence is an interesting period where you try to fall in love with men and women, but I realized that I did not like girls.

P

.

Already…

R.

I began to suspend everything and not pay attention to anything.

I was breaking down and the only one who didn't realize it was me.

I repeated again.

My parents didn't know what to do.

The protection of the people turned to anguish.

I couldn't breathe.

Then you arrive in Madrid and here everything is something else, nothing happens.

Q.

Have you suffered a lot for love?

R.

I have fallen in love well.

Wonderful people have passed through my life.

Why do you want me to suffer for love?

Do I look like that?

Q.

I can't even think of it!

R

.

Ah okay.

P

.

Is working with Sorrentino another dimension?

R.

I really like the challenge, when you find a script that is worth it, I would do it for free.

You rub your paws.

You put yourself to the test, you climb a mountain.

But it has happened to me with Sorrentino and with many others: with Isabel Coixet, now with Fernando Trueba or Almodóvar, who with

Hable con ella

changed my life in a way.

Having Ricardo Darín in front of

Truman

and working with Cesc Gay has been a luxury.

If you ask me about Sorrentino, then the same.

It is wonderful.

When they tell me it's hard, I am surprised.

For me it is simply exquisite.

Q.

How does one manage to stay 30 years up?

R.

Ah, friend, that's the key. Maybe it has to do with how my parents taught me that I should be like an ant.

To buy me a house worthy enough to live in and to save.

P.

Common sense ...

A.

Yes, she is a very careful woman of her children, she was born with the Republic, she went through a war, she was always very aware of her children.

Now that I am a father I understand it, although you realize that there are many things that were important to them but that you do not want for your children.

Like everything, it depends on the circumstances, many times you know what you are not willing to instill, but you have no idea what to do.

The doubts are permanent.

I have no manual.