In September he will turn 28, 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, Riot gear or the last season of Money Heist, where he embodied the son of Berlin. Now he will premiere two works in less than three weeks: Las noches de Tefía on Atresplayer (June 25 and from today also in theaters) and Bird Box Barcelona on Netflix (July 14). Since his beginnings in Águila roja, when he was still a child, Patrick Criado (Madrid, 1995) has almost chained one job after another to become one of the most requested actors in Spanish fiction.
His most immediate news is Manuel Flores, 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 of Colonia Agrícola Penitenciaria de Tefía. Those convicted by the law of vagrants and thugs, which later included homosexuals, were sent there.
Like Manolín, “a person full of life despite the traumatic moment that he lives and who always pulls his teammates with a smile and without letting them take away his dreams,” Criado advances in conversation with La Vanguardia. To survive, Manolín and his companions flee with their imagination at night to El Tindaya, a music hall where they fulfill their fantasies.
And in Bird Box Barcelona, ??the remake by Álex and David Pastor of the film Blind in which Sandra Bullock starred in 2018, is Rafa, “a survivor in an apocalyptic Barcelona where you can’t go outside because there are some creatures that you look them in the eye, you commit suicide”. Rafa leads a group that lives in tunnels “who 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 began to become popular in 2009, when he joined Águila Roja. That series marked a before and after for Criado, who came to the profession not vocationally like many of his colleagues, but “half a rebound, to try, and in the end life has led me there.” The teacher at the school’s theater workshop saw his talent and spoke to his mother, “that she 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 shooting and I was delighted; I had a couple of sentences and I had an incredible time”.
With the character of Nuño in Águila roja, which he played for eight years, he realized that “I was no longer just a child who was going to have a good time, but I could also take it as my profession”, explains the man from Madrid, who shows himself grateful to his family for never forcing him to do anything and for always making him “have his feet on the ground, value his studies and be a person of integrity and not a TV kid”.
He has lavished less on film, although he has already been nominated for a Goya: in 2014 as a revelation actor for La gran familia española, by Daniel Sánchez Arévalo. Among the actors who most inspire him, Javier Bardem stands out, of whom a movie premiere is not lost, and of the international scene, “I am very classic”: Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Robert de Niro, Meryl Streep , Kate Winslet…
When it comes to preparing his characters, he is “very anarchic” and “follows my intuition a lot.” He admits that they tend to offer him rather tormented characters, “although we all are a bit, huh?”, he responds with smiles while explaining that he sees it as lucky: “Playing characters with many layers, fears and traumas allows me to explore and learn”. “Each project is a journey that changes your life, perspectives and points of view”, he adds.
On a personal level, his great passion is traveling: “Take a backpack and go anywhere in the world to mingle with people and discover myself.” The trip that has marked him the most is the one he made to Thailand and Vietnam in 2020, just before the pandemic, when the filming of Riot Control ended.
A trip that he made only partly because of how difficult it is in his job to agree on dates with more people, but also because he likes to do it that way and find those moments “in which one feels super comfortable with oneself and even jokes around myself”. For this reason, one of his worries is getting stuck in a work circle “and not being able to enjoy pleasures like leaving and not knowing when I will return.”
And what else worries Patrick Criado? “The little climate awareness of politicians and citizens and how technologies are invading privacy and are leading us to increasingly consumerist thinking and less internal reflection”, he answers without hesitation.
When she observes people hooked on mobile phones and social networks on the subway, she wonders “how will it affect us in 15 years to be unable to live without technology”. She compares it, “saving the distance”, to the arrival 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 it?” Criado asks, who would like to “sow some reflection” with his words.
