Fortune has long favored Ricardo Darín. More than the subjective concept of talent, it is providence, expressed as the unshakable confidence that others have in their own abilitiesto which the actor credits his award-winning career as the world’s most celebrated Argentine film star.
“I was lucky because my parents weren’t lucky as actors,” he said during a recent interview at the Sunset Tower hotel. “Many times I have been valued much more than I value myselfand then I think, ‘Could it be that I deserve so much?’”.
The latest example of his relationship with luck is his role as prosecutor Julio Strassera in Argentina, 1985, a historic courtroom drama about the junta trial, when military leaders were tried for human rights violations during the previous dictatorship. Managed by Santiago Mitre, it earned Argentina a Oscar nomination for best international feature film.
Lucky charm
Ricardo Darín seems to be his country’s lucky charm when it comes to the Academy Awards. He starred in the four films Argentina was nominated for this century: The son of the bride, wild tales, The secret in their eyes -who took the statuette in 2010- and the aforementioned Argentina, 1985.
Over the years, Argentina has applied to the Academy for other productions starring Darín, which means that, even if not all of them have been nominated, the films in which he appears are almost synonymous with the best of Argentine cinema.
From the first handshake, Darín, 66, radiates a welcoming aura. Dressed casually in jeans and a navy blue tee, he speaks with a warmth and frankness that most people reserve for their closest friends. That temper translates to the screen.
“Ricardo has an immense power of empathy with the audience, and that’s rare,” said the director. Juan José Campanellacollaborator of Darín in four feature films.
Although the passion for acting was inherited from his parents, who worked as actors in Buenos Aires, neither of them was enthusiastic about continuing the family business. “They didn’t fight me, but they also didn’t put tokens on me to do it,” he recalled.
Darin Consider that his path is predestined. During her childhood, she regularly visited film and television studios and theater stages and first acted professionally at age 3 in the 1960 series Soledad Monsalvo.
At 10, she made her stage debut with her parents. At 14, when he attended his first theater workshop, Darín already felt like a veteran who had experienced many facets of the craft firsthand.
For a time, in adolescence, He considered himself a veterinarian, a psychologist or even a lawyer. But in the end, the world he had always been familiar with convinced him to stay. Doors opened easily for him, with frequent invitations to participate in various projects.
That trust from industry notables is what he calls luck. Darín has fond memories of the television director Diana Alvarezwho fought with a network in 1982 to get him on the show us and fears. She saw potential in him that others could not.
The luck factor
“Luck in our trade is very important,” says Darín. “There are a lot of talented people out there with a lot to say who aren’t finding opportunities.”
In the 1990s, Darín had great success in the television sitcom My brother-in-law, in which he played a sassy, but charming awkward. His contract prevented him from participating in other television projects, but allowed him to devote himself to cinema.
Among his film roles is his first film with Campanella, same love, same rain (1999), which helped other directors see beyond their TV persona.
One of them, Fabian Bielinskygave him the role of a dastardly crook in the thriller Nine queenspremiered in Argentina in 2000.
“He told me, ‘I hadn’t thought of you for this character. Because you are too kind. And I don’t want the audience to have any kind of empathy with him,’” said Darín.
According to Campanella “there’s only one thing Ricardo can’t be, and that’s hostile. The clearest testimony to this is Nine queenswhere he plays an amoral crook, yet we’re on his side.
The move came the following year The son of the brideby Campanella, who used Darín’s comedic sensibilities to bring to life the role of a restaurateur caring for his elderly parents.
“A critic once called him ‘our Henry Fonda’ because he projects grit,” Campanella said. “But he has one thing that Fonda didn’t have, which is a great sense of humor.”
The beginning of a career
Darín claims it was the first consecutive of Nine queens AND The son of the bride which cemented his film career.
“It was like a great cover letter for an actor to have the opportunity to show two completely opposite facets almost simultaneously,” says Darín. “Although I was already well known for television and theater issues, there I began to feel that my colleagues began to consider me a little better”.
Since then, the actor has enjoyed his chosen roles, including the acclaimed The secret in their eyesby Campanella, in which he played an investigator haunted by a gruesome unsolved case.
Another one of Darín’s favorite roles is comedy-drama Truman (2017), centered on a terminally ill patient who He spends his last days with his best friends, one human and the other canine..
His sarcastic nature reminded Darín of his late father, also called Ricardo Darín, whom he described as a quirky Renaissance man with a dry sense of humor and far-fetched ideas that others found hard to swallow.
Why not Hollywood?
Hollywood reached out to him a handful of times, but he declinedmostly because the hardest thing for an actor is to think in another language, he said, adding that close-ups reveal when someone is reciting from memory instead of inhabiting an emotion.
“I always trusted my stomach a lot, more than my heart or my head,” Darín explained, and then added, pointing to his belly: “I trust how the material hits me here.”
In Argentina, his role in wild tales (premiered in the United States in 2015), by Damián Szifron, in the role of a frustrated citizen who fights against the oppressive bureaucracy, was very well received by the audience. “Ricardo has a clear eye on the realities affecting his country,” said Szifron. “He is a popular figure and, at the same time, a sophisticated actor.”
For Argentina, 1985Miter and Darín decided not to mimic the real Strassera’s exact voice or gestures, but instead took some artistic liberty in their recreation.
Mitre, who directed Darín as a fictional Argentine president in the 2017 political saga The rangehe said he admires the way the actor produces a truthful performance through a synthesis of his own sensibilities and that of the character.
Source: Clarin
