He will turn 28 in September, but he is already a regular face on the small screen with series that have connected with the public and critics such as Mar de plástico, Vivir sin permiso, La línea invisible, Antidisturbios or the last season of La casa de papel, in which he played Berlin’s son. Now he will release two works in less than three weeks: Las noches de Tefía on Atresplayer (June 25 and from today also in cinemas) and Bird Box Barcelona on Netflix (July 14). From his beginnings in Águila Roja, when he was still a child, Patrick Criado (Madrid, 1995) has almost chained one job after another until he has become one of the most requested actors in Spanish fiction.
Its most immediate actuality is Manuel Flores, in Manolín, also known as La Vespa, from Las noches de Tefía, a series that takes place in the Francoist concentration camp that existed between 1954 and 1966 in Fuerteventura under the name Colonia Agrícola Penitenciària from Tefia. They sent those convicted by the vagos y maleantes law there, which later included homosexuals. Like Manolín, “a person full of life despite the traumatic moment he is living and who stimulates his colleagues always with a smile and without letting them take away his dreams”, Criado said in conversation with La Vanguardia. To survive, Manolín and his companions run away with their imagination during the night in El Tindaya, a music hall where they fulfill their fantasies.
And in Bird Box Barcelona, ??Álex and David Pastor’s remake of the film A Ciegas that starred Sandra Bullock in 2018, Rafa is “a survivor in an apocalyptic Barcelona where you can’t go out because there are creatures that , if you look them in the eyes, you commit suicide”. Rafa leads a group that lives in the tunnels “which has no choice but to welcome the protagonist played by Mario Casas, with its consequences”.
It is the double return of this young actor who started to become popular in 2009, when he joined Águila Roja. This series marked a before and an after for Criado, who came to the profession not by way of vocational training like many of his colleagues, but “on the back burner, to try, and in the end life has brought me here”. The teacher of the school’s theater workshop saw him as talented and spoke to his mother, “who knew a director”, and he began to make small appearances in series such as Los Serrano, El comisario or Amar en tiempos revueltos . “I used to skip school to go to the shoot and I was delighted; I had a couple of sentences and I was having a great time”.
With the character of Nuño in Águila Roja, which he played for eight years, he realized that “I was no longer just a kid who was going to have fun, but I could also take it as the my profession”, explains the actor, who is grateful for the fact that his family never forced him to do anything and always made him “keep his feet on the ground, value studies and be a person of integrity and not a child of the TV”.
In the world of cinema, he has lavished less, but he has a Goya nomination: in 2014 as a breakthrough actor for La gran familia española. Among the actors who inspire him the most, Javier Bardem stands out, who never misses a film premiere, and from the international scene “I’m a lot of classics”: Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Robert de Niro, Meryl Streep, Kate Winslet…
When it comes to preparing his characters, he is “very anarchic” and “follows intuition a lot”. He admits that he is usually offered characters that are rather tormented, “although we are all a little bit, eh?”, he answers with smiles while commenting that he considers it lucky: “Playing characters with many layers, with fears and with traumas allows me explore and learn”.
On a personal level, his great passion is travelling: “Take a backpack and go anywhere in the world to mix with people and discover myself”. The trip that has marked him the most is to Thailand and Vietnam in 2020, just before the pandemic, when Antidisturbios ended. He did it alone because of the difficulty, in his job, of matching dates with more people, but also because he likes “finding those moments when you feel super at ease with yourself and I even make jokes to myself same”.
And what worries you the most as a human being? “The little climate awareness of politicians and citizens and how technologies are invading privacy and are leading us to an increasingly consumerist and less reflective way of thinking”, he answers without hesitation.
When he sees people glued to their mobile phones and social networks, he wonders “how will being unable to live without technology affect us 15 years from now”. He compares it, “saving the distances”, with the introduction of heroin in the eighties, when its effects were unknown, and attributes to this reality “the growing wave of mental illnesses, anxieties, insecurities and eating disorders”. “Who protects us and what are the tools to fight against this?” asks Criado, who would like to “sow a little reflection” with his words.
