Celebrity Biographies
Achero Manas
He knew how to make an important decision at a key moment in his life. As an actor, he didn’t have much of a chance to make the movies he really wanted to make, so why not write and direct them himself? Thus, Achero Mañas, despite his short filmography, has become one of the most interesting directors on the Spanish scene.
Juan Antón Mañas Amyachs from Madrid –born on September 5, 1966– belongs to a family closely linked to the theater, since his mother is the actress Paloma Lorena and his father is the playwright Alfredo Mañas . He spent his childhood in the Madrid neighborhood of Carabanchel, linked to the world of literature, stage and art.
At the end of high school, he enrolled in painting at the school of arts and crafts, while taking his first steps as an actor. At the age of 15 he was already appearing inThe adventures of Enrique and Ana playing a small role as a member of a musical group that calls themselves the Coconuts.
In the mid-1980s, Achero spends a year in New York, where his mother has won a scholarship. There, the boy takes acting classes at the Real Stage school. Back in Spain, he resumed his career as an actor, and worked –almost always with directors of great prestige– in films of uneven quality, such as La guerra de los locos , by Manolo Maji,1492. The Conquest of Paradise , by Ridley Scott ,Shoot! by Carlos SauraThe King of the River , by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón , andThe law of the border , by Adolfo Aristarain .
But the interpretation does not fulfill him, and he decides to leave it, coinciding with the birth of Laura, his first daughter. “Acting was a bit humiliating for me because I was participating in many projects that didn’t interest me at all. In Spain, three or four serious films are made a year, which I like, similar to me. In some of those there may be a role in which I fit, but of course, there are also five hundred other actors who fit in”, Mañas told me during an interview.
Thus, he decides to embark on writing and directing his shorts Metro , Cazadores –awarded with the Goya award for best short– and Artificial Paradises . While he was filming them he was finalizing the writing of his first feature film,El Bola , about a boy mistreated by his father.
At that time, the producer José Antonio Félez is creating Tesela, his production company, and comes to the conclusion that the script for El Bola is perfect to take it to the screen. He hires the boy Juan José Ballesta as the protagonist , who won the Goya for Best New Actor, in addition to the other three that the film obtained, including Best Film.
His second feature film wasNovember , 2003, an ambitious tribute to the figure of his father, a playwright, and to the world of stage in general. He introduced the excellent actor Óscar Jaenada , who played Alfredo, the idealistic creator of a particular group of actors.
Although right after this film, Achero Mañas directed the documentaryBlackwhite , about the peace process in Northern Ireland, seven years passed before he returned to direct a fictional film.
“I needed to get some rest and do other things with my life. Cinema is very important to me, but it is not the only thing. I have mainly dedicated myself to studying Philosophy, although I did not finish my degree, but rather did some subjects”, Mañas explained to me. Finally, in 2010 he directsEverything you want , where Juan Diego Botto embodies Leo, a lawyer capable of anything to take care of his daughter, after the death of the mother.