The Catalan actor Eduard Fernández (Barcelona, 60 years) has been awarded this noon with the National Cinematography Award, corresponding to 2025. This award, granted annually by the Ministry of Culture, is endowed with 30,000 euros. On the phone, Fernández confesses to El País: “I came to the rehearsals of a series with the Sánchez-Cabezudo brothers and suddenly the minister has called me. I have not been very aware of its importance, until I have turned on my mobile and have begun to fall all the congratulation messages. It has been a weirdo.” And he has thought about his mother, ”in the illusion he would do to him, and that, on the other hand, he would put him in a place similar to mine: I accept it very excitedly and that’s it; or as she would say very well, and see what we do to eat.”
Fernandez may have deserved this award for a few years, but his double last season is only available to the chosen ones: he embodied Manolo Vital in 47, by Marcel Barrena, already enric frame in Marco, From Aitor Arrangei and Jon Garaño. For the latter, and his subtle incarnation of one of the great liars of the history of Spain, he has obtained all kinds of awards, including the platinum for best Latin American actor, and the Goya for the best protagonist, the fourth trophy of the film academy after Fausto 5.0 In 2001, In the city in 2003 and While the war lasts In 2019. Another of the greatest honors of his career received him in 2016, when he obtained the silver shell of the San Sebastián Festival for his characterization of Francisco Paesa in The man of the thousand faces.
The jury has unanimously chosen the interpreter “for being one of the most prominent actors in our cinematography and also having had a 2024 with two outstanding interpretations in two completely different films: the noble man who struggles for the common good in 47 and the role for which Goya won the best protagonist for Marco, where it becomes a complex and contradictory figure as Enric Marco. “Given this, Fernández does understand that 2024 was his year:” Someone already warned me. And it was true, in addition to that I am a dragon and I touched on the Chinese calendar. If someone likes to look for explanations beyond, there I leave it. ”
In addition, the actor has debuted as a director with his short film The other, A very special piece, in which Fernández speaks, among other things, of his last addictions, and those who dedicated an interview with Jordi Évole: “I could not have told it, right? But I have allowed it. And delving into those last addictions, it emphasizes: “It is a very stigmatized disease and little by little you have to talk about it, just as it happened with depression. It can be treated and should be normalized. Although the short does not only go from that. Now I am writing another script with someone … and it is very difficult. I have realized the time of the important thing in the cinema that is the script. I was always with the actor, the actor (laugh). The director, more than the interpreters, the script imports. ”
The reflection is born from a versatile man, endowed with technique and huge talent, and with whom all directors want to repeat: “I like it when life or a director throws you to do something you would never have imagined; and if you tell me a few years ago they would call me for Manolo Vital or for Enric Marco, I would not believe it.” And, now, who asks the future? “I would like to make a love movie, pretty, that touches me, or roll with Rodrigo Sorogoyen or with Alauda Ruiz de Azúa or with a girl that I don’t even know her name and that one day she will write her first script and call me … or with Rodrigo Cortés, with whom I have a script on Lope de Aguirre that we wait one day to find producers …”.
Fernández’s career began at the theater: he studied Mimo at the Theater Institute, and subsequently work at Els Joglars and the Teatre Lliure. When he jumped to the cinema, it was, therefore, a known performer, and he did it in 1999, with the twins who embodied in Zapping, and with him Thriller Los Lobos de Washington, by Mariano Barroso. Since then it has not rested. In addition to those mentioned, it appears in The goalkeeper, the voice of his master, are sea, smoking room, the mystery Galíndez, ants in the mouth, obaba, alatriste, three days with the family, biutiful, pa negre, the skin that I habit, people in places, All women, mosquitoh, a gun in each hand, Marseille, the child, perfect strangers, Mediterranean o A thief’s daughter, With his daughter Greta. On television appeared in All women (It was series before movie), Decalç on Terra Vermella, stories not to sleep, 30 coins o Iron hand, And a new version of The House of Spirits And his work as Santiago Carrillo in the miniseries version of Anatomy of an instant, Adaptation of Javier Cercas’s novel.
He has not set aside the theater, or act in classics as an exceptional Hamlet, who interpreted with the late Marisa Paredes and directed by Lluís Pasqual; With this work he achieved the best leading actor. Has another theatrical awards for All love songs, The work dedicated to his mother. It seems incredible that at this point the comments still suffer: “I am very vulnerable, quite permeable, to negative criticism.” And to the positive? “Over time I let the positive also enter. Today I commented with my girl about how someone could become gilipollas because they praise you for an award. And she has answered me: ‘It is already older. And very breast.’ Well, surely.”
The recognition, which the Minister of Culture usually delivers within the framework of the San Sebastián Festival, received it in its last edition of the producer María Zamora, joining a list of previous winners as Penelope Cruz, José Sacristán, Isabel Coixet, Antonio Banderas, Josefina Molina or Carla Simón.