Jose Sacristan

Born in Chinchón (Madrid), on September 27, 1937, José María Sacristán Turiégano went hungry and suffered all kinds of hardships during the postwar period, since his father, El Venancio, a peasant militant of the communist party, ended up in prison “for red, no matter how red ”, he recalls. When she went to see her husband behind bars, her mother (La Nati) –who had a prodigious voice for coplas– would leave him and her sister in the care of their grandmother, the most important figure of her education. In the chicken coop of the cinema in his town he saw his first film. “I don’t remember the title, it was one of Fu Manchu,” and he decided that he wanted to be an actor, like the ones he saw on the screen. “My father defeated, humiliated. And me wanting to be Tyrone Power, John Wayne and Errol Flynn, because you do not think that I wanted to be Adolfo Marsillach ”.

When El Venancio was released, he took his family to Madrid, where they lived poorly as renters with three other families in a modest house in Carabanchel. The young José Sacristán studied at the Virgen de la Paloma Vocational Training Union Institution, run by the Salesians. “He didn’t have many religious principles, but they gave us food,” he recalls. “If you got a 5 in carpentry and a 7 in forging, and you said that you wanted to be a carpenter when you grew up, they would answer: “Man, you have gotten more marks in forging”. What did I put? “Movie artist”. They would call my father, and he would say: “What do I do now? I kill him?”. But I was very clear about it, ”he recalls. “Although I appreciate that they gave me a job.” He ended up as a mechanical turner during his adolescence, in a workshop in Chamberí, from which he would walk back to his neighborhood (“he didn’t even have money for the subway”), passing through Gran Vía, where he was dazzled by the huge billboards in the theaters of that time, and he liked to imagine his name and face on them. He also collected trading cards (“they kick you out of the movies, and the best way to stay inside were trading cards, touching them, sticking them and collecting them”), waiting for the day he would appear in one of them.

While he was doing his military service in Melilla, he took advantage of the fact that he had a lot of free time to read all the books he could find, acquiring an enviable literary culture. During that time he decided that he would fight to fulfill his dream, so when he finished he began to lavish himself in the theater with small interventions, and in the cinema he got some roles as an extra. He always recognizes that he owes a lot to Fernando Fernán Gómez . “He told me that when I appeared as an extra he didn’t have to let my face show too much. Because if he recognized me clearly, they weren’t going to hire me the next day!” Until the death of the redhead, both always maintained an enormous friendship and professed mutual admiration. “I try to be a good student of his, but I’m only in Fernando’s second year,” he joked.

Since his profession did not provide him with a living (“I remember doing seven roles at the same time in ‘Julio César’ for 30 duros”), he became an employee of Círculo de Lectores (“I was one of its first salesmen, which took away from me very hungry”). Pedro Masó rescues him, to offer him a small intervention in La familia y… uno más , a springboard to become a regular at the films of Paco Martínez Soria in titles such as The city is not for me, Grandfather has a plan or Don erre que erre . He soon specialized in small roles in middling comedies, but which he played with enormous dignity, his balloon salesman in Sor Citroen , the doctor in ¡Cómo está el servicio! , the stuttering filler in Nuevo en esta plaza or the recruit friend of the protagonist in Cateto a port are well above the level of each film. He is convincing even as a macho husband to the extreme in The Silly Boat , in a despicable character who, however, at that time produced laughter.

He has just become one of the regulars of landismo, along with other performers such as Alfredo Landa himself , or Antonio Ferrandis , who despite filming then the only thing that made money at the box office, later had the opportunity to demonstrate his enormous worth. He intervenes in a minimum of five titles a year. Along with  You will not want the neighbor’s wife , Come to flirt to the West , or Manolo, la nuit , his Angelino, from Come to Germany, Pepe , remains for the memory , with a tragic point, since he boasts of having made a fortune by having emigrated , but that hides that reality is not as beautiful as it seems,

A turning point in his filmography was his meeting in the mid-70s with producer José Luis Dibildos , from Ágata Films, the first to notice that this actor was enough for much more, who recruited him as the protagonist of his films Vida conjugal sana y The new Spaniards , by Roberto Bodegas , and My wife is very decent, within what is possible , by Antonio Drove , with which the so-called Third Way of Spanish cinema was inaugurated, which sought a middle ground between commercial cinema and Author. The three titles have in common scripts in which Dibildos himself and José Luis Garci intervened, who later as a director would also take advantage of the actor, especially in Solos en la madrugada and Asignatura pending . The Nobel Prize for Literature Mario Vargas Llosa co-directed the film with José Sacristán Pantaleón and the visitors , an adaptation that does not reach the level of his novel.

Once his power has been demonstrated, prestigious filmmakers begin to trust him, his friend Fernán Gómez turns him into his son, into a family of itinerant actors, in the excellent The Journey to Nowhere , Pedro Olea into a lawyer who leads a double life as a drag queen in A man called Flor de Otoño , Luis García Berlanga in the Republican lieutenant of the Civil War Broseta, in La vaquilla , Eloy de la Iglesia in a left-wing homosexual parliamentarian in El diputado , Gonzalo Suárez in the writer José Ditirambo, in Epilogue, and embroiders above all the role of another intellectual, the hungry José Marco, central axis of La colmena , adaptation of the novel by Camilo José Cela directed by Mario Camus .

José Sacristán married very soon, still in his twenties, with the also actress Isabel Medel ( El fenómeno ), with whom he had two offspring, José Antonio and Isabel. After his divorce, he had various idylls, the most lasting with another interpreter, the French Liliane Méric (later dedicated to promoting and press cinema), whom he had met when they filmed together Green begins in the Pyrenees (1978) . . Méric bore her another daughter, Arnelle, before she was separated by her sour nature. Later he lived with the Argentinian Leonor Benedetto , and has had romances with Laura del Sol , the now famous heart talker Mila Ximénez and according to rumors also with the ItalianLaura Antonelli , before finding stability with Amparo Pascual, who is also dedicated to dramatic art, having appeared in series such as El comisario .

He has never left the theater, with a brilliant career in which “I’m getting off in the next one, what about you?”, written by Adolfo Marsillach , and co-starring Concha Velasco , which in 1981 was a phenomenon after its premiere in 1981, stands out. Madrid’s Teatro de la Comedia. His musicals with Paloma San Basilio, “El hombre de la Mancha” and “My Fair Lady” caused a furore at a time when this genre was not as common as it is now on Madrid billboards. And he toured extensively with David Mamet ‘s celebrated “Porcelain Doll . “

Despite so much activity, he has had time to direct. He debuted with Tin Soldiers , where he also plays the lead, a man who returns to his hometown to take over his inheritance. Accompanied by great actors, such as Fernán Gómez or Amparo Rivelles , it was based on a story by the illustrious writer Eduardo Mendoza , whose best-known character, the nameless detective, he had also brought to life on screen in The Mystery of the Haunted Crypt . Despite not being round, it has points of interest, the same thing that happens with his second work behind the cameras, Cara de Acelga, where he also acts as the protagonist, a homeless man who tries to steal a valuable painting. He withdrew from the realization after the third, unsuccessful adaptation to the cinema of the aforementioned I get off in the next one, and you? , which also recovered Velasco, his co-star.

He begins the 90s in the cinema with what is perhaps his best work on the screen, in A place in the world , by Adolfo Aristarain , where he plays a geologist, hired by the chief of a town in the Argentine province of San Luis, to look for oil, who befriends a family of exiles recently returned to the country. The film justifiably won the Golden Shell in San Sebastián. He would repeat with the director in Rome . After titles like Madregilda , by Francisco Regueiro , Everyone in jail , again with Berlanga, and El pájaro de la felicidad , by Pilar Miró, seems to be more interested in television, with popular series like ¿Quién da la vez? or This is my neighborhood , or more recently Velvet or Alta mar . Despite everything, he has continued to shine on the big screen from time to time, as a retired teacher with a stormy past in Magical Girl , by Carlos Vermut , a hippy determined to live as in his youth in Formentera Lady , by Pau Durà , a guy who in the In the past he was brilliant, but he suffers from Alzheimer’s, in Las furias , by Miguel del Arco , and a violent mafioso but apparently charming in Toro , byKike Maillo .

Humble to the core, it’s easy to run into him on the subway, walking to the theater, a beggar next to the venue may claim he gave him a ticket when he saw him, and if he finds out you like the movie Casablanca (of which is an absolute devotee) may surprise you by bringing you the recording of the disc. He does not hide his leftist militancy, but unlike others he is quite critical and intelligent in his speech. “A lot of nonsense like the “spokesperson” kills the left”, he has declared, or “The rapper’s idiot comes up with saying that the ETA people are really nice guys and that I wish there were more of them! He’s an asshole! That boy is an asshole.”