Jorge Sanz (Madrid, 1969) is like Augusto Monterroso’s dinosaur. It’s always been there. Not only because he made his film debut at the age of eight and was Conan the Barbarian (by John Milius) before he turned 12, but because since then he has never stopped working. At the end of the eighties and during the nineties, teenage girls lined the high school folder with his face and he rode on the success as if the world was going to end. But the next day, like winter, comes. The merit is not to return, but to stay. And this is what Jorge Sanz has dedicated his life to. “That fame is circular Serrat said it very well after Mediterráneo: one day you are the wafer and then people end up killing you. And they forget you But you do what you do, you do another little song and you’re back on top. They rediscover you. ‘But where were you?’ I’ve always been there. I have a family, bills to pay and I’m doing theater, my little things. It’s just that you’re not always in the blockbuster movie or the fashion series.”
The Jorge Sanz of 2024 is chubbier than that handsome man of the nineties – needless to say it does not affect him and he is just as happy – he wears a beard and likes to grow a Scottish lord’s moustache. He no longer goes to bars or parties, grows garlic and tomatoes in his garden, in Torrelodones, and continues to devote himself to the script with the same enthusiasm as always. He has just released Por tus muertos, a comedy that he presented at the Malaga Festival together with El hombre bueno and Matusalén. A hat-trick of the type that had the arrests of starring in ¿Qué fue de Jorge Sanz? . In Por tus muertos – directed and written by Sayago Ayuso, who also acts as an actor – he plays Valen, drummer of a legendary heavy group from the eighties whose members (José Mota, Marta Belenguer and Carles Francino jr.) forced to meet again by circumstances. “Sometimes you have the feeling that they have written the character to measure, and that’s how it was: I said to myself, damn, only I can do this. It could be a dream character, every time there is a problem it turns out that… I mean, that’s what Bruce Willis does and we freak out.”
Valen, disenchanted ex-musician and prone to the abuse of psychotropics, has a relative very close to the Civil Guard, an affair that would fit well in the son of a military man like Jorge Sanz: “I started at the time of the opening and for a military was heavy that his son was always behind the tits. But my father was quite liberal and said if I liked it and it was good, go ahead. My childhood was messed up. I would arrive at a shoot, they would put me on a horse, give me a sword and take care of me like a motherfucker. When people ask me if the cinema has taken something from my childhood… What the hell it must have taken away from me. In addition, I had a very good education with my family, I traveled, I laughed, I did great in a job that I knew how to do well… Then, if I went to Cuba for two months to make a movie li, when my father came back he took me with him to the barracks to compensate (laughter)”.
It is not so common for an artist to recognize in such a natural and uncomplicated way the good side of popularity: “I was 14 or 15 years old, I was starting to be famous and I was worried. Verónica Forqué, who was like my older sister, told me: ‘Don’t worry. Just think that from now on you will be everyone’s second cousin. A cousin you see at Christmas. Well, you will have this relationship with everyone’. Seriously, going through life being famous and being liked by people… it’s really easy. It amuses me and the people look funny: they come, say hello, how are the children, a photo. Before, mothers would come to me: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are, but my daughter is hysterical and if you could take a picture with her’. Now girls come to me and say: ‘Look, I don’t know who you are, but my grandmother is hysterical, sispli, take a picture for her’ (laughs)”.
Jorge has three children, aged 33, 21 and 9, who have been brought up between sets and sets. Now that the youngest suggests that he wants to dedicate himself to it, his duty is to warn him about the thankless side of the profession: “Actors who live only from the interpretation are 7% or 8%, and I am on the fringe between 7% and 70% who earn 12,000 euros a year. Michael Caine explained it very well in a book. A friend asked him for advice because his daughter wanted to be an actress and he replied: ‘How long can your daughter go without food?’. You must not forget it”. In any case, it’s worth trying and making mistakes: “I have the feeling that I’ve experienced what was happening to me at every moment. At 20 years old, I couldn’t stand the idea that someone could be having a good time somewhere and not be there. It was everywhere. All that I have. And now I’m enjoying it a lot, too: I live peacefully with my offspring, my children, my grandchildren, work, I have a garden and I’m happy. I have survived for now to be able to enjoy life”.
