Pedro Almodovar
Pedro Almodovar
Pedro Almodóvar Caballero is a Spanish film director, screenwriter, producer and former actor. He came to prominence as a director and screenwriter during La Movida Madrileña, a cultural renaissance that followed the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. His first few films characterised the sense of sexual and political freedom of the period. In 1986, he established his own film production company, El Deseo, with his younger brother Agustín Almodóvar, responsible for producing all of his films since Law of...
NationalitySpanish
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth25 September 1949
CountrySpain
There's something about uninterrupted singing that just doesn't work for me, because at some point, I need my characters to talk. Without meaning to offend anyone, a musical like 'Les Miserables' would be the last thing I'd ever be interested in.
When I'm writing, I don't put faces on the characters. When I finish the first draft of the script, I start visualizing, and sometimes then I think about one actor.
As a woman Penelope Cruz has changed as she has become an adult. But, as an actress she has not changed that much. She has something great, especially in comedy, and she hasn't been exploited as much as she could be in comedy, but particularly in that mix between comedy and drama. She's got a very special quality about her. You can place her in very extreme situations, especially very painful situations, in terms of how her character interprets it. And sometimes, the deeper and more human that pain is, the better she is at it.
Maybe it's the culture, maybe it's the cliché of Latino machismo, but the Mediterranean male character is more dull than the female character. Women are more surprising and they have fewer prejudices.
All my movies have an autobiographical dimension, but that is indirectly, through the characters. In fact I am behind everything that happens and that is said, but I am never talking about myself in first person. Something in me - probably a dislike of cheap exhibitionism- stops me from approaching a project too autobiographically.
Broadway musicals, where you sing the whole time, I really don't like; I like alternating dialogue and music.
I'm an artist, and I'm part of every decision in a movie.
I think my films are always political, even if I don't put explicitly political things in them.
My directors of photography light my films, but the colours of the sets, furnishings, clothes, hairstyles - that's me. Everything that's in front of the camera, I bring you.
La Mancha is a very macho, chauvinistic society. I saw very clearly that my life had to be in Madrid, and I liberated myself from my mum and dad after high school.
My first memory is of the eyes of my brother; he was looking at me all the time.
I ask myself questions that journalists don't dare to ask or don't know how to ask.
Cinema has become my life. I don't mean a parallel world, I mean my life itself. I sometimes have the impression that the daily reality is simply there to provide material for my next film.
I think it's a change that I did not intend at the time but it is clear that, from The Flower of My Secret on, there is a change in my films. A lot of the journalists have very generously attributed this to my growing maturity.