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
My first memory is of the eyes of my brother; he was looking at me all the time.
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.
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.
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.
But, although these films express many similar ideas from my previous films, I think they express these ideas in a different way.
Of course I want my films to look really good, but every single element is chosen for a reason. It's telling something in the story.
You can make a thousand different movies about the same subject.
The problem is that I work in more than one genre. It's impossible for me to aim for a single one because, for me, comedy is mixed with tragedy. That's very Spanish, the way in which comedy and tragedy are inextricable from each other.