His therapist warned him a few months ago.
Beware of success because it can kill.
Susi Sánchez has this phrase engraved on fire, which is why she is wary of her new status as a mature star of Spanish cinema.
Until not so long ago she lived quietly, in a peaceful corner, with her discreet supporting roles, giving acting classes.
She was one of those secondary schools respected by the trade but unknown to the general public, with an erratic career in film, theater and television, although she has never lacked work.
Until, suddenly, when she was close to her retirement age, her offers and prizes began to multiply.
And, with them, came a kind of storm that she tries to cross aboard a modest boat.
“The only thing I ask is to be able to continue doing my job as before.
What I like is to unravel my characters, and nothing else.
What I like about my job is my job ”, he affirms on a sunny morning in Madrid, in the final stretch of winter.
“I know that many become actors to get fame, success, somewhere.
I have never wanted to get anywhere, anywhere.
I didn't need this recognition.
It is being a very big whirlwind and it catches me a little older, ”he says.
She doesn't want to sound ungrateful, but she prefers to think that this dream is coming to an end.
One day, soon, they will stop calling her and she will live in peace again.
“If you are not aware that the falls exist, the falls are a bump.
Did you see that I fell at the Goyas?
Maybe it was a premonition…”.
Susi poses with a Max Mara shirt, Cortana t-shirt, Joaquín Berao earrings and Isidoro Hernández necklaces.Santiago Belizón
There is no false modesty in the words of this 68-year-old actress.
Maybe just a small dose of self-deception that allows him to keep her sanity.
One of the best actresses of her generation, capable like few others of transmitting truths about the human condition?
It will be less.
Deep down, hers isn't that bad: she learns a role and then she recites it.
She doesn't think she has more talent than any neighbor's daughter who starts studying four afternoons in a row.
“I have been with what they call impostor syndrome all my life.
For a long time, I thought they would realize that it was all a scam, that I was worthless."
And when did she start to believe it?
“With the Goya for
Cinco lobitos
.
That night I said to myself: well, maybe there is something…”, he laughs.
Her prize rewarded the role of matriarch faced with her disease, rough but self-sacrificing, brimming with regrets and renunciations.
Almost as much as the Goya, what excited her was that true strangers wrote her messages like this: “You are more Basque than my Basque mother”.
Actually, she is Valencian—she was born in Xirivella—but we'll get to that later.
Despite not being from Biscay, Sánchez was the first choice for the character of Begoña.
She “she wanted to portray a lifelong housewife outside of the common places.
The fact that someone dedicates herself to the home does not mean that she is not a complex being with secrets, although they have not always been portrayed that way, ”says the director of
Cinco lobitos,
Alauda Ruiz de Azúa.
“Susi brought that mystery, that personality, a sense of humor very much like a Basque mother, dry but well liked.
It was the perfect combination."
Since its premiere, the papers have rained on him.
The actress has just released
Loli Tormenta,
the posthumous film by Agustí Villaronga (1953-2023), in which she plays a grandmother with Alzheimer's, and she is preparing the series
Mentiras pasajeras,
production of El Deseo that will be released by Paramount+, among other things that it cannot announce.
“What I like is to unravel my characters, and nothing else.
What I like about my job is my job,” says the actress, who is wearing an Alexander McQueen suit and Bottega Veneta shoes. Santiago Belizón
Suddenly she had to get selective, she used to say yes to everything that came her way.
And she admits that she has a bad time.
“It seems unfair to me to choose.
Why some yes and others no? ”, She answers with an inexplicable candor.
Now they also stop it on the street for the first time in five decades of experience.
“But people are very respectful to me, more than to my young colleagues who work in television.
They are touched, there is a familiarity.
They come close to me, but from a distance”.
Maybe because she imposes a bit?
“I don't do it on purpose, but that's what they tell me.
I don't know if it's because of my height, or because of my way of speaking, which can be a bit blunt or harsh.
I guess it's a defense mechanism.
We all have our ways of going through life.”
And what is yours?
Sánchez has something reminiscent of a running bird, a somewhat gangly elegance.
False forms of a diva that hide a disturbing insecurity.
An almost pathological modesty, an irrepressible tendency to sincerity.
A somewhat cavernous voice, which seems to come out of some inner abyss.
That beauty —not necessarily plastic, but also— that good people tend to give off.
Her lack of self-esteem, about which she is transparent, he attributes to her upbringing.
“At home they didn't want her to be an actress.
I was a very obedient girl, and that my father did not give me his blessing hurt me.
He was an older man, born in 1913, and he considered that this was a profession for whores and fagots.
For him, we had come into the world to do what we have to do, not what we want, ”she relates.
that seems to come out of some inner abyss.
That beauty —not necessarily plastic, but also— that good people tend to give off.
His lack of self-esteem, about which he is transparent, he attributes to her upbringing.
“At home they didn't want her to be an actress.
I was a very obedient girl, and that my father did not give me his blessing hurt me.
He was an older man, born in 1913, and he considered that this was a profession for whores and fagots.
For him, we had come into the world to do what we have to do, not what we want, ”she relates.
that seems to come out of some inner abyss.
That beauty —not necessarily plastic, but also— that good people tend to give off.
His lack of self-esteem, about which he is transparent, he attributes to her upbringing.
“At home they didn't want her to be an actress.
I was a very obedient girl, and that my father did not give me his blessing hurt me.
He was an older man, born in 1913, and he considered that this was a profession for whores and fagots.
For him, we had come into the world to do what we have to do, not what we want, ”she relates.
and that my father did not give me his blessing hurt me.
He was an older man, born in 1913, and he considered that this was a profession for whores and fagots.
For him, we had come into the world to do what we have to do, not what we want ”, he relates.
and that my father did not give me his blessing hurt me.
He was an older man, born in 1913, and he considered that this was a profession for whores and fagots.
For him, we had come into the world to do what we have to do, not what we want ”, he relates.
For Sánchez, acting has been, among other things, a form of self-knowledge.
"She is a person with a great interest in human psychology, including her own," says director Ramón Salazar, who brought her to the forefront, when she was a semi-unknown, with 10,000 nights nowhere and La enfermedad
del
domingo
,
for the one that received its first Goya in 2019. "He connects so well with complex and convoluted characters because he knows how to locate their traumas."
The actress usually works from her experience, from her childhood, from her family.
“But she does it from the light.
She has known how to forgive those who have hurt her and who have paralyzed her.
It is as if her journey and her suffering had been worth it in the healing channel that art has been for her”, adds Salazar.
Susi Sánchez is wearing a caftan by Cortana and bracelets by Joaquín Berao.
Santiago Belizon
Susi Sánchez takes her family history to the surface.
She was born in 1955 in Valencia “by chance”, the daughter of a “leftist” soldier, descendant of a lineage of Extremaduran railway workers, who had fought on the Republican side before accepting a job in the Francoist Army.
She “she accepted it, above all, because she had access to the military commissary, a supply of bread, powdered milk, coffee and oil.
To feed her family, she went there and now she stayed forever, ”says the actress.
“He was a man who lived in fear.
He was worried that someone would see the
Jesus Christ Superstar
poster he had in my room.
He would stay up late drinking and talk to me about the war.
When he was drunk, he always wondered the same thing: 'What's the point of life?'
He had me upset."
His mother was from Murcia, the daughter of "a hustler" and the only survivor of all his siblings, who died as children.
She “she was a much tougher woman, who married when she just turned 17.
She missed all of her youth.
She was a very vital woman, but she must not be very happy.
She was one of those incredible women who surpassed everything, albeit sometimes at the cost of those around her.
She demanded a lot from us ”.
She passed away seven years ago, at 90. What did she feel?
“Relief,” Sánchez answers without hesitation.
A Cuban friend, a Yoruba priest, told her that her death would break a spell.
And that's what happened.
Since the death of her mother and that of her brother Ismael, also an actor, Susi Sánchez's career has drawn an upward curve.
She is embarrassed to say it, but she knows that it is not a coincidence.
“My brother didn't work as much, and I had a hard time.
In my generation, there was a kind of tacit agreement in families: until men succeeded, women couldn't.
So I couldn't succeed, do you understand? ”, she replies.
“Over time, I have been removing a feeling of brake, of not having the right.
When my mother died, that feeling was already definitive.
That freedom also includes her private life, since she allowed him to recognize her lesbianism.
"Actually, my family has always known, but my mother asked me not to talk about these things in public until she was dead."
The artist wears a Gucci dress and a necklace by Isidoro Hernández.Santiago Belizón
As a young man, he felt the call of God.
“Luckily, it didn't last.
That was tremendous…”, recalls Sánchez.
He refers to the nuns at his school, examples of pettiness and not moral rectitude.
“They chickened me out, and I was already a pretty insecure kid.
They bullied me, even though it wasn't called that at the time.
But I suffered it in all the schools where I was, without exception”.
Because?
“Because she was weird, too tall, and on top of that she was blonde.
And in this country she couldn't be weird, tall and blonde.
They told me that she had the face of a horse, ”she replies.
In her house she did not have much support either.
“They didn't give me much confidence, no.
My sister Isabel has been the only one who has believed in me.
Always always.
She is the only one with whom I have been able to share my successes.
My mother, when they nominated me for any award, would answer me: 'And when is the draw?'
And she laughs, even though she looks sad.
It is hard to believe that Sánchez did not shoot a single film between 1974 and 1994. He says that it was during the time of the uncovering, in which "he did not have much to teach", and because of a catastrophic debut in A different... couple
,
with Lina Morgan and José Luis López Vázquez, where she played a nurse “with a garter belt and a miniskirt”.
“I had a terrible time,” she recalls.
Afterwards, she took refuge in the theater, at the hands of directors such as José Luis Gómez and Daniel Veronese, and also on television, where she did
Golden Weddings,
some Estudio 1 and a fixed section in the youth program
Cajón desastre,
with Miriam Díaz. -Aroca.
With the arrival of the private ones, she chained the roles in series such as
Family doctor, Hands on work
or
The house of troubles.
It hurts a bit to imagine what Carlos Saura, Mario Camus or Pilar Miró would have done with it.
The actress wears a Valentino shirt, bodysuit, skirt and shoes. Santiago Belizón
His height and his sexual orientation have cost him some role.
Many did not know what to do with his 1.76 meter height.
For example, Alejandro Amenábar ruled her out for
Thesis
for taking several heads off Ana Torrent.
“They couldn't find anyone who matched well with me.
The men were shorter than me.
They didn't give me secondaries either because they saw more of me than the protagonist.
So, in the theater, they began to give me abstract characters or atmospheric phenomena.
I have made the sun, the wind and the moon, ”she recounts.
“When I was older, boys who were better fed and bigger than me began to arrive.
The Cola Cao generation saved me”.
Being a lesbian didn't open any doors for her either.
“There were directors who had the romantic idea of living some kind of story with me.
And since it couldn't be... One stopped calling me for 10 years.
I can't say the name because he's still alive, but I'd love for him to get a good one, since he did it with a lot of teammates.
He told us that we would not work in this country again, ”she recalls.
And with Vicente Aranda, with whom she shot four times?
“It was different, although he also stopped calling me.
I introduced him to my wife [actress and acting teacher Consuelo Trujillo, from whom he separated four years ago] and we never worked together again.
He didn't tell me that was the reason, but I can guess.
I think he was quite attracted to me, even though he was more than married, but he really liked women.
I told her a little on purpose, so she would know that she was busy, ”
says.
The MeToo made him aware of the seriousness of behaviors that he considered normal and were not.
“All actresses have suffered abuse.
Whoever says no is lying ”, he affirms.
“What happens is that before it was resolved with a slap, and now with a complaint.
I don't think it's bad, but I don't need the police to come.
I usually fix it with a good kick in the balls”.
This is how the third act of Susi Sánchez begins, and she looks fast-paced.
This is confirmed by Pedro Almodóvar, with whom he has worked four times doing small roles.
“In addition to being a very good actress, she has a stunning and unusual physique, with very unusual range.
She can be rude like her in Cinco lobitos, but she is also absolutely sophisticated, ”says the director.
“I feel indebted to her, because I have offered her short things that were not up to her talent.
She's the perfect age for the kind of roles I'm writing now.
It is my great hope to work with her on a larger project."
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