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
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.
I remember myself at 10 years old telling stories to my sisters and brother. This is something I did through my adolescence and even through my twenties.
In fact, it was the women in our house who were in the saddle. If men are the gods, women are not only the presidents but all the ministers of the government.
Before shooting, I prepare with the actors much more like it's a theater play than a movie. Apparently, that way of working is very unusual.
I am partly not conscious of structure with my movies but this is when I am writing. I leave my mind very free and then I correct it after.
If I'd lived like my characters, I would have been dead before I'd made 16 films.
If I make a movie in English, the money will come from Europe, so that I can keep my independence and freedom. The way they produce in Hollywood doesn't fit me.
I'm more interested to show the darkest places of myself, and I don't joke about it.
The 1980s really ended for me in 1992 with the film Kika.
I was born at a bad time for Spain, but a really good one for cinema.
When I'm writing, I don't put faces on the characters. When I finish the first draft of the script, I start visualizing, and sometimes then I think about one actor.
I'm really a nightmare for the fashion designer because I take away all of his authority, and I become the authority, and I turn him into my assistant. You could say I intervene, and I intervene in a very determining way in all the aspects that have to do with the visual construction of the film.