This is going to be a shower of ellipses, you have been warned. The fault lies with the interviewee, the actor Diego Martín (49 years old, Madrid), whose particular way of expressing himself cannot and should not go unnoticed. He does several things. One is that he interrupts the sentences, hence the ellipses. He also loves to hesitate before giving an idea: “Well”, “in my opinion”, “maybe”, “it seems to me”, “I don’t know”… Before, it was very easy to say that someone was very Woody Allen. Now it is less fashionable, but Diego Martín is very Woody Allen: it is a pleasure to see him ramble, with his hesitant discourse, as if he were on the psychoanalyst’s couch.
But what really connects him with the director is his facility for both physical comedy and playing touchingly pathetic characters. There is his Carlos, There is no one living hereone of the characters that has best survived from an already immortal series, or Chemi, from Muertos SL (Movistar+ Plus), the series with which this year he has worked again under the orders of the Caballero brothers, and whose second season is pending premiere.
These days, Martínez rolls Legacyanother series—this one, for Netflix—that promises to be a success: Jose Coronado and Belén Cuesta co-star, and its creator is Carlos Montero, creator of Elite. A very Spanish cast for an actor who has been in Paris for 10 years. From the beginning, he felt that he fit the style of that city. Martínez confesses to having been “a bad son of Madrid.” He has never been very fond of her, he says, although he has begun to appreciate her. “Maybe I look at it differently. When I was little, my mother told me that I was ‘joy in someone else’s house’, that is, that she was comfortable in every house except mine,” he laughs.
It makes sense that the actor is in the city to celebrate the anniversary of a French jewelry store: the relaunch of Trinity, the Cartier collection distinguished by its three interlocking three-gold rings. “An important part of my admiration for this house is linked to a mythomaniac side that I have lost over time, but that I had strong as a child,” he explains. “Many people who have fascinated me have had something to do with Cartier in some way,” he says, alluding to a clientele that included Gary Cooper and Cocteau.
He will soon be 50, vertigo? It’s chilling. This profession entails a kind of race that turns into a flight forward, in which one always has the feeling of constantly starting, of waiting for something.
What is that something? Let something bigger or better come along, give you another profile of yourself. I think there is always something that predisposes us to each job being a springboard to the next. Although when you reach this age, there is an echo that makes you realize that there are no longer so many things ahead of you. I hope I’m wrong. But one also knows that there are many more people working at 20 or 30 years old than at 55 or 60.
After more than 300 hours of television under your belt, can’t you extinguish that feeling of abyss? Jack Nicholson said that no matter how many zeros were on the check, he always thought it was the last one. Even knowing that something has happened to you that does not happen to 90% of the people in this profession, I believe that there is no actor to whom something similar does not happen.
“There are actors who are the epitome of human intensity who do very well, but I have always been a little embarrassed by people who consider themselves artists, and those levels of intensity”
Does that wear you out? In that sense it is a hell of a job. Things wear out and erode. I have had periods of working less, one recently… there was no one who could stand me. There is the economic part and the existential part. The actor exists as a profession if he practices it, the work and the play are you. An actor, as an artist, needs someone to hire him to work.
If you didn’t have financial need, would you continue acting? I’m going to make a rather disgusting comment on my part… Sometimes you feel not very legitimate… excessively imposter in a job that so many people dream of and don’t get. I’ve been very lucky and I’m still here, but sometimes I consider that… I listen to other actors and I think there is a vocation, something that fills their lives, that I don’t find in myself. Between acting and winning the EuroMillion, I’ll take the EuroMillion. At this point in my life, I don’t think anything would happen to me if I stopped acting.
And at the beginning it was a vocation? Absolutely. I never dreamed of this. It was a series of coincidences. Acting didn’t even cross my mind; I didn’t have anyone around me who was dedicated to anything related to acting. It was very late. I studied Law like the wind passes by… then chance, the path that opens up and the decision to take it.
Isn’t it dangerous to think like this within your profession? I think that, at least for me, it has been beneficial not to take it seriously. There are actors who are the epitome of human intensity who do very well, but I have always been a little embarrassed by people who consider themselves artists, and those levels of intensity. Especially because you have to be able to fill out the character. If you are that intense and you are Daniel Day Lewis, then great, but if you don’t reach those levels it looks very ridiculous. I, who have always been a bit of a coward, have always preferred to take things as a joke.
But there are many people who are very fond of him as an actor. I’ve thought about that. It’s not that I reflect much on my jobs, which in general I consider absolutely expendable. I am grateful to them because they have allowed me to continue, to live, to eat, to buy the books I wanted, but I do not give them a cultural or significant dimension of any kind.
Just because I don’t give it to you doesn’t mean they don’t have it. I don’t deny it… I know… but that has to do with time, with luck. In the case of There is no one living here, the series is beginning to be viewed with affection because many people… yesterday, for example, I was filming with a very young girl, insultingly young, and she told me: “You’re iconic!” Saying this phrase to someone is ridiculous, but I mean it in the sense that, for her, the series represents something familiar. It is a series that has not stopped broadcasting in the last 30 years, and there are people who know things by heart. It is a constant cultural hum. But that has nothing to do with me. I am lucky to belong to something that has been very beast. However, there are many other of my works that no one has seen, that no one remembers.
Production: Paty Abrahamsson / Makeup and hair: Lucas Margarit (Another). / Photography assistant: Marcos Jiménez. / Styling assistant: Jorge Ariza. / Digital retouching: Madem Studio.
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