Celebrity Biographies
Santiago safe
Nobody would say that he is a first-rate director, but he connects with the public. He is perhaps a limited actor, but he has a great facility for making people laugh. The main virtue of Santiago Segura is that he manages to be liked, even if he plays rude characters or uncouth police officers. It has to have something to have been given three Goyas.
Born on July 17, 1965, Santiago Segura Silva is –like one of his most famous characters– “from Carabanchel”, the famous Madrid neighborhood. A student at the popular San Isidro Institute, in the capital of Spain, when he was 12 years old he bought a Super 8 camera at the Rastro that gave him the opportunity to shoot three-minute shorts. He shot several works like this, among them Relatos de la medianoche , awarded at the Cinema Jove contest in Valencia, and which Fernando Trueba , a member of the jury, liked very much .
After finishing his degree in Fine Arts, Santiago Segura worked writing for erotic publications with names as illustrative as “Supertetas”, and he was a porn dubbing actor. He participated in numerous TV contests to be able to finance his 35-millimeter shorts: Evilio , Evilio vuelve (El purificador) and Disturbed , which won the Goya for best short. In addition, with them he competed in various film festivals, in which he met other young aspiring filmmakers with whom he became good friends, such as Óscar Aibar , Pablo Berger , Daniel Monzón or Álex de la Iglesia .
The latter, gave him a small role in Mutant Action , his feature film debut. Segura asked the director to also hire him for his next job, El día de la bestia , but he initially refused. When the actor Gabino Diego , who was going to play the clerk of a death metal store obsessed with Satanism, failed him due to other commitments , De la Iglesia – at the suggestion of producer Andrés Vicente Gómez – decided to call Segura. Since the role suited him, and because of his natural grace, Segura became a celebrity after the success of the film. He even got a second Goya, for best newcomer.
Segura’s greatest success came with his first feature film as a director, Torrente, el brazo tonto de la ley , which, thanks to his skills for promotion and marketing, became the highest-grossing film to date in Spanish cinema. He plays a seedy, dirty and intolerant policeman, while his father, an invalid, was played by Tony Leblanc , an icon of Spanish comedy who had been retired from acting for years. In case there was any doubt that his colleagues adore him, they gave him a third Goya, this time in the category of new director.
He wrote Torrente 2. Misión en Marbella in the same room where his friend Guillermo del Toro was writing a revision of the script for El espinazo del diablo . The Mexican usually recruits him to make cameos in titles like Blade II and Hellboy .
In addition to turning his saga of the casposo Torrente into a tetralogy, Segura repeated under De la Iglesia in Perdita Durango , Muertos de risa and Balada triste de trompeta . He also had time to intervene in titles such as Isi & Disi , The amazing world of Borjamari and Pocholo , La máquina de bailar , Beyond Re-Animator , Asterix at the Olympic Games and El gran Vázquez , where he plays the cartoonist who created characters like Anacleto , Secret Agent and The Gilda Sisters.
In addition, he has presented television shows, such as “You knew what you were coming to”, and he starred with José Mota in the musical “Los productores”, at the theater. Jealous of his private life, little is known about his privacy. Paired with María, a television makeup artist, Santiago Segura is the father of a girl. He lives in the heart of Madrid and it is common to find him walking through that area.