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Actress
Ana Cerdeiriña Joins Los Hombres de Paco Reboot |
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Actress Ana
Cerdeiriña
from Madrid, Spain has been a lot of things when she first took up
acting. She was a mosquito, a bird, the sun, and a tree, but as her
career progressed, she was cast in juicer roles, such as, a nun who sold
aphrodisiac candies, and a psychopath. One gets the sense the role she
enjoys the most is being the mother to her daughter.
Ana Cerdeiriña has been in drama
series such as Si No Thagues Conegut, sitcoms like Gym Tony
(2015) and her most recent role in the television series Los Hombres
de Paco Reboot.
Life began for Ana Cerdeiriña,
“in Salamanca, a little town in Castile y León. It is a big area in the
northwest of Spain, but not as far north as Galicia. It is a university
city with students from all over the world. I have a small family, my
father, my mother, my sister, and me. The center of my life is my
father, my mother, my sister and now my daughter. My mother is a nurse,
my father is a doctor, and my sister works as a hospital administrator.
My father and mother split up when I was twelve years old, and I went to
live in Madrid with my mother and my sister. I have lived in Madrid for
thirty years.
When I was a child and I wanted to become an actress, my mother and
father thought that was bad news. They wanted me to study for a
different career. In Spain when you are fourteen and sixteen years old
and if you say you want to be an actress, it is not beautiful news,
because it is so difficult to be an actor or an actress here. Our
country has a lot of good things, but the arts and acting or creative
(careers) are difficult.
Her first training in the arts came through the music conservatory where
she studied piano, learned to sing, and studied music theory.
“It was the way for me to (keep alive) the arts in my body, in my brain
and in my life. When I played the piano, and I sang songs I thought I
wanted to dance. When I told my parents, I wanted to dance they said
okay, I could do it. I attended a dance academy in Salamanca and step by
step I got closer to acting.
I went to a private academy for dance, but I do not consider myself a
dancer. For me it was another way to learn. I can sing, but I do not
consider myself a singer. I am an actress who can sing.
When I was fifteen years old and I was living in Madrid, I told my
parents I would like to study acting and my mother said okay. It came
through the music first. First it was music, then dancing and then
acting.
I always loved American and English dancers, singers, actors, and
actresses. For me it was Wow! I want to be this way. For me it was
different than other actors and actresses. In Spain it was not common
for an actress to sing and dance and to play an instrument. It is more
common with younger actors and actresses, but not for people in my age
group,” she explains.
Fast forward to the most recent two and one-half years and
Ana Cerdeiriñahas been busy. She
just finished shooting Los Hombres de Paco, in which she plays the
character Covadonga.
“Los Hombres de Paco is a TV series on Antena 3. Fifteen years ago, it
was a very popular series in Spain and now Globomedia has decided to do
it again. It is a remake. In fact, they have called it Los Hombres
de Paco Reboot. It is set in the future from when the previous
series stopped. Because of the pandemic in the world Globomedia decided
to do it again.
It is a sitcom about a group of police, but they were a disaster,
because they were very, very bad (at being) police. Now in this season
they are like the secret police (similar to) the CIA, only in Spain it
is the CNI. I am Covadonga and I dress well for someone who is in a low
social class. She is a high dresser in a marginal neighborhood in
Madrid, Spain. I speak badly and I speak with bad words,” she says
drawing a comparison between her role and that of Liza Doolittle in
George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion.
Although, Ana Cerdeiriña
has really shone in comedic roles, which in some respects is more
challenging for an actor or actress than dramatic characters, she yearns
for some more dramatic roles.
“It is true that I have done more comedy than drama, but I like both.
For me comedy is more natural, but I would like to do more drama.
Gym Tony (2015) was a sitcom. Cecilia was a fun character,
because she believes she must be gay, because she always falls in love
with people who are gay. She said I am gay, because I am always falling
in love with gay people. I like gay people. I love gay people and
therefore I must be gay. She would fall in love at the gym and say I am
your lover. I am in love. Do you want to marry me? She was a fun
character to be. This was just for one episode,” she explains.
Her role as a nun in Aída is absolutely hilarious and readers can find a
snippet of this episode in Ana Cerdeiriña’s videobook on YouTube.
“It was a special role, because Aída was a popular TV series in Spain.
This was one role for one episode and this nun was a very fun nun. She
sold a special kind of candy that was an aphrodisiac, but she didn’t
know it. It was a funny episode,” she says.
Two of Ana Cerdeiriña's
more dramatic roles came in 2018, in Small Coincidences and in
the Antena 3 television series (now seen on Netflix) Si No Thagues
Conegut (On Netflix titled If I Hadn’t Met You).
In Small Coincidences my role was that of a psychopathic woman.
It was very interesting, and I liked it so much. I love this kind of
role with criminal minds. For me it is a dream. It is what I like to do
the most,” she says alluding to thriller films and series.
We then share a joke in which this writer asked
Ana Cerdeiriña if she is telling
me that she likes to be funny psychopaths and laughing she replied, “It
is my future.”
She tells us how her role as Irina in Si No Thagues Conegut came
about.
“This series was very curious. I did a play with Sergi Belbel the
director) and I was the same character in that play. It was a long time
ago and the TV series presented the play. First came the play and then
later the TV series. The TV series was in Catalan, because Sergi is
Catalan and the producers were Catalan. It was on TV 3. I understand
Catalan, because some of my family are Catalan. I can’t speak Catalan,
but Sergi wanted me in the series, so he wrote a little role for me.
Irina was a Romanian woman who spoke bad Catalan. He wrote the role for
me.”
In 2018 Ana Cerdeiriña also appeared in the film Jaulas, directed by
Nicolás Pacheco. It was a film about marginalized people, and she played
the role of a reporter.
We posed a question to Ana Cerdeiriña
about if she could have met any of the characters that she has portrayed
in real life, whether they were real characters of fictional ones come
to life who would she have liked to have met.”
She replied, “I did a project, and I was in the role, as the best friend
of Matthew Shepherd who was a boy who was killed by others, because he
was gay. I would have like to have met with Matthew’s best friend.
Ana Cerdeiriña
has
come a long way from her first acting training at Laboratorio de Teatro,
where the director was William Layton. She also studied with Miguel
Narros at JC Plaza and Juan Carlos Pérez de la Fuente and she considers
this to be an important time in her life. Interestingly, both were also
former students of William Layton.
The conversation becomes more reflective when we ask Ana Cerdeiriña how
she finds the balance in her life and what her daughter thinks of her
mom being an actress.
(She laughs lightly) “It is so difficult for me. I have a normal life. I
am a mom and when I am not on stage or in front of a camera, I am a
normal person. I am where I am, because I am an actress. If I was not an
actress, I would be another person. I would be another woman, another
sister, another daughter. My life is amazing and faster, but it is a
normal life. My daughter has a house, a mother, a grandmother, and a
grandfather. The balance is complicated, but the balance is my daughter,
my friends, my boyfriend, my mother and my sister.
When I am on stage or in front of a camera my life is amazing and shiny,
but when I arrive at my home, I have a person who is important to me.
My life as an actress is normal for my daughter, but sometimes she says
to me, mom you are an actress, but don’t you want to be a normal person
and be a normal mom? (Ana laughs). I ask her, what is a normal mom? For
her my job is normal, not for society, but for her it is normal.”
#AnaCerdeiriñaActriz #ActricesEspaña
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If
my daughter came home and said she wanted to be an actress I would
probably tell her no, but fortunately she loves math and science,” says