Eduardo Noriega

Eduardo Noriega was born on August 1, 1973 in Santander. He is the youngest of seven siblings and the only one who showed interest in the world of “artisteo” even as a child. He studied music for several years at the Santander Conservatory and in 1990 began to give theater classes. Two years later he moved to Madrid to take classes at the Royal School of Dramatic Art.

And things weren’t bad for him because he soon began working on short films like Luna (1994), by his friend, still unknown, Alejandro Amenábar . A year later he made his feature film debut with a small role in Historias del Kronen , by Montxo Armendáriz . It remains for the cinematographic anecdotary that his character was the one who incited the protagonists to hang from a bridge on Madrid’s Paseo de la Castellana, an image of the film that would remain for posterity. A larger role was given to him by Amenábar in his debut as a feature director. His evil Thesis Bosco(1996) served to show that he knew how to take advantage of his pretty boy face to show the worst facets of a human being. Curiously, in Amenábar’s first job he was the victim and now he became the executioner. In his next collaboration, Abre los ojos (1997), however, the filmmaker leaves the door open for the viewer to decide if he is one or the other. This complex and suggestive film leaves another memorable image for history, which is that of Noriega in the middle of a deserted Gran Vía. It also served the actor for his first Goya nomination.

Thanks to Amenábar, Noriega was already one of the Spanish fashion actors. Even so, he continued to participate in short films such as Home Breaking (1998) by Mateo Gil . Later he starred in his feature film Nobody Knows Nobody (1999), where he was the hero of the story. But despite the fact that Noriega feels extremely comfortable in the thriller, either suffering or making suffer, he wanted to try other records: the comedy Cha-cha-chá (1998), where he was the “number one” handsome man, the drama Visionarios ( 2001), about apparitions of the Virgin, the warlike Guerreros (2002), set in Bosnia, and the biographical Che Guevara(2005), where he played the popular guerrilla fighter.

In the field of drama, his best works have been in Las manos vacías (2003) and El método (2005). Marc Recha directed the first one and later reunited with him in Petit indi (2009). Catalan is the creator of a very personal cinema that many associate with the most applauded Iranian works. The fact is that his films are not attractive to a mainstream audience, so this work by Noriega may have gone unnoticed by many. In a much more commercial line is Marcelo Piñeyro ‘s method , where he played one of the “bloodthirsty” candidates for a position in a prestigious company.

With Pyñeiro he had already worked on the thriller Plata quemada (2000), playing a thief. He also didn’t show the softer side of him in Guillermo del Toro ‘s horror film The Devil’s Backbone (2001). These two films are an example of the numerous co-productions in which he has participated in both Europe and South America. Some jobs that have not prevented him from continuing filming at home, as El Lobo (2004) demonstrates. More was expected from this thriller about “the mole” placed in the bowels of ETA, but Noriega’s work as the risky protagonist earned him his second Goya nomination.

His work abroad has allowed him to rub shoulders with actors of the stature of Woody Harrelson , Ben Kingsley and Emily Mortimer in Transsiberian (2008) or Zoe Saldana , Forest Whitaker , Dennis Quaid and Sigourney Weaver In the crosshairs (2008), his first Hollywood production. Over the years, Noriega has ceased to be the handsome actor of the nineties – despite the fact that Amenábar showed him with a deformed face in Abre los ojos– to become a guy who, without giving up his good looks, likes to get on the viewer’s nerves by being an unscrupulous villain, as well as proclaiming himself a leader and making the joys and achievements of his characters those of the public.