Passionate about Spain
uropean movie stars traditionally don’t travel to Australia to support their movies. There’s the distance, the lack of financial pressure (their movies are funded by governments so there’s no pressure for the Hollywood hard sell) and, quite frankly, they’re reluctant to leave their own gorgeous countries.
This is definitely not the case with the vivacious, energetic Elena Anaya, the Spanish beauty who leapt to international fame in 2011 playing Antonio Banderas’ gorgeous captive in Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In.
For the Castile and Leon-born bombshell, selling a movie is part of the job — and she will go anywhere and everywhere to ensure it finds an audience.
“A movie does not end with the shooting,” Anaya says over the phone from Sydney where she travelled as a guest of this year’s Spanish Film Festival with her rock’n’roll ghost story They Are All Dead.
“I have three goals when I make a movie. To make my director happy, to touch the audience in a deep way and to make sure the movie is financially successful, which is difficult because I choose movies that are challenging but which I love with all my heart.”
Unfortunately, Anaya’s passion for supporting her movies and supporting the Spanish film industry in general is not matched by her fellow Spaniards, who she says have a bad case of what Australians call “the tall poppy syndrome”.
“They are terrible in my country,” laughs the 39-year-old Madrid-based actress.
“Filmmakers are so jealous of the success of others that they would choose an unknown to represent Spain at the Oscars rather than selecting our greatest director, Pedro Almodovar.”
Such is Anaya’s generosity of spirit that she was happy to use the fame she gained from co-starring with Banderas in The Skin I Live In, in which she plays a man who has been turned into a woman by vengeful surgeon, to boost a tiny movie by first-time director Beatriz Sanchis.
They Are All Dead is the tale of an agoraphobic former rock star named Lupe who, after the death of her brother and music partner Diego, is living as a recluse with her son and Mexican mother.
After a celebration for the Day of the Dead, Diego walks into Lupe’s kitchen, initially sending the one-time Goth rocker into a spin but eventually setting her on the path to reconciliation with her past and an emotional rebirth.
“It’s a truly beautiful tribute to life. It is the story of someone who re-emerges after so many years in darkness,” says Anaya in English so refined that it’s little wonder she routinely works in American movies (she has recently been in London shooting The Infiltrator with Bryan Cranston).
Anaya says that she first became aware of the ability of an actor to channel “life” (her favourite word) and emotion when she saw Meryl Streep in Out of Africa. “I was amazed when I saw what Meryl did in that beautiful movie. And in her other movies she totally becomes the characters she plays.”
Anaya’s passion for “life” extends well beyond the screen as she has recently returned from the Arctic where she was taking part in a Greenpeace campaign aimed at turning 10 per cent of the waters into a sanctuary.
“Greenpeace is doing such an amazing job in protecting the planet that I am happy for them to use my profile in any way. It is important work.”
They Are All Dead is on at Cinema Paradiso on Thursday at 6.30pm. It is one of the Spanish Film Festival’s special events. See the website for details.
