Thursday, March 28

Charo López, the actress who refused to be just the erotic myth of the Transition


“Suggests sex”, “full face”, “hazel eyes”, “her face has marked her and will continue to mark her until death”, “pretty”… This is how the press defined actress Charo López in the 70s and 80. Few mentions to her talent as a performer, many to her hypnotic beauty. The machismo of the time meant that for many years only her physical attributes stood out and never her interpretations full of passion and dedication. Charo López was, and is, a whirlwind, a force of nature that she imposes from the moment she sets foot on a set or stage. It was hard for her to see what was behind that young woman who was described by many as the “erotic myth of the Transition and the intelligentsia”. There was much more, and her career was a constant struggle to break with that image, to show that she was an actress.

“Actresses over 40 have been relegated to being mothers or grandmothers of the male lead”

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He tells it in the documentary It’s hard for me to talk about myself directed by Chema de la Peña, which before its next premiere on March 3 was presented at the Cineteca de Madrid, where the actress attended a small discussion where she faced one of her greatest fears, the questions and reactions of the public at your work. Despite having been acting for six decades, she is still terrified of interviews. Hence the title of this work where she reviews her life and her career and where she manages to relax. Minutes before the end of the screening, López herself acknowledges that she is “scared”, and in front of the people she stresses again and again that she has “stage fright” and that she has not yet seen the documentary. “I’ll see it now, when you’ve all seen it, and in my house alone.”

At first he said no. She didn’t want to expose herself, open up. She is allergic to showing her feelings, as she makes clear at one point in the documentary when she gets emotional and the only thing she manages to say is “give me a Kleenex and cut it, dammit.” She told the director no many times. “I thought it was going to be an interview like the thousands I’ve done and then I realized the commitment. I didn’t know where I was getting into and I’ve had a really bad time sometimes. Not because of Chema, but it’s hard for me not only to talk about me, but to be here at this moment. I think what am I painting here. It’s been 60 years since I started this profession and I’ve learned to be in front of a camera, to be here I still don’t know how to do it,” he said after the first screening of the documentary to the public.


Charo López gradually broke that shyness, and ended up accepting that he was a bit “cowardly” and that he was “very afraid of certain questions.” In the end they managed to get her to sit down for a whole day to review her life, a portrait of a pioneering, strong and free woman. She said between laughs that she had also “fucked the director a lot” and confessed the three subjects that she prohibited in the documentary: “Interviú, Almodóvar and the men”. The Almodóvar thing was skipped by the bullfighter and explained that she said no to Bullfighter, and that to fix their friendship he said yes to a very small role in Kika. But there he settled it.

Cinema came to Charo López almost by chance. She had done some play, but she was ready to be a teacher. Suddenly, one day, thanks to her first husband, she meets Gonzalo Suárez. As soon as he met her, the director knew how to see that there was something on her face. He offered her the role of Ana Carmona in Dithyramb. She did not know what was happening, and her partner told her a phrase that she still remembers: “He is offering you to make a film, from today you are a free woman.” For that film, she even had to go to Rome to meet soccer player Helenio Herrera, who became the unexpected producer of the film.

Movies, roles in series began to arrive, but few that she felt brought out her potential as an actress. The press continued to highlight only her attributes. She included her in the lists of the most beautiful women, and she achieved some fame. Many described her as “the erotic icon of the intelligentsia”, but that did not give her work or good roles. At that time there were few of whom she was proud of. Instead of dragging herself in by-products or surrendering to the honeys of uncovering cinema, Charo López breaks the deck in the year 79. She decides to leave the cinema after two years without being called and she returns to her job as a teacher.

If they didn’t tell me I’m pretty, I’d get pissed off. He is a mouse that eats you, takes away your spontaneity, demands a lot from you. I am obsessed with beauty

charo lopez
Actress

“There was a very strong economic crisis there in which I wondered for the first time what happens when they don’t call you, so I went to an institute and asked for a job, I showed them the papers and they told me that I could start the week comes. When I was preparing classes, the director called me and told me that the teachers’ committee had decided that an actress could not teach in an institute, “recalled the actress. Luckily, just around the corner was her role that changed her life, that of Mauricia ‘the tough one’ in the television adaptation of Fortunate and Jacinta that Mario Camus made in 1980.

That role was key, and made her hook a series of characters in which she played free, brave, passionate women who “did not become victims.” For her they were “marginalized and beautiful women to interpret, because they do not accept the rules of the game”. If one of those women’s roles changed her life, it was that of Clara Aldán in another television adaptation, that of The joys and shadows. He ate the camera in mouthfuls, and in that year 82 when the country was still shaking off the dust of 40 years of dictatorship, López starred in a scene that revolutionized the audiovisual, a female masturbation.

“That scene was the best,” he said with a laugh at the presentation of the documentary, where he clarified that the scene was never completely clear and mentioned the mythical speech that Petra Martínez gave this year at the Feroz Awards talking about a subject that is still taboo: ” That was brave and that really is a glass ceiling. On TVE they told me to do it in such a way that if the children saw it they would believe that my stomach hurt, and that if the adults saw it, that their teeth hurt. They told me if we rehearsed and I said no, we’d shoot the next day. I don’t have much experience masturbating, but… I told the director, ‘you take the camera and see what you get’. And it went ahead and it was a great success. And no one was scandalized. Or they didn’t tell us.”

For Charo López it is not enough to play a good role, but there is something that, although it is not said, everyone wants, “popular repercussion”. Do “beautiful things and that people remember”. That happened to him many times afterwards. On The detective and death, or in secrets of the heart, with which she won her only Goya for Best Supporting Actress. A career marked by an enormous shadow, that of her beauty, which made her always be considered a pretty face and that even she became obsessed with it. “It’s a bore, I spent the whole day, and if they didn’t tell me I’m pretty, I’d get pissed off. It’s a mouse that eats you, takes away your spontaneity, demands a lot from you. I demand myself and I’m obsessed with beauty,” he acknowledges in the documentary, although he also knows that “it made my life much easier”, he expresses in the documentary.

His lapidary phrases in I find it hard to talk about myself show their strength and courage to speak openly about topics that were still almost forbidden for women, as shown in that scene that almost closes the film in which she tells why she preferred to live without a partner: “Being alone is a disgrace, but living alone is a privilege that is not achieved by chance. It costs a lot. But in Spain, when a woman says that she lives alone, you always hear ‘poor thing, she hasn’t found a husband’, and there are other options”.



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