The life of actress Macarena Gómez is a continuous journey. From one character to another, from one project to another, from one medium (film, theater or television) to another. This in the professional field. Because she, in her personal capacity, also usually moves from one city to another, on a train with a fixed destination: Figueras.
There, in a farmhouse far from the hustle and bustle, she has her home and also Dante, her son. Although, other times, the actress heads to her native Córdoba to visit her loved ones. “I always say that they made the AVE for me. And this is anecdotal: many supervisors are colleagues of mine,” she shares, laughing, with journalist Joana Bonet in the series of 12 interviews Mujeres y Viajeras de Renfe. A walk, in this case, along the rails that have shaped the life and profession of this actress, muse of horror cinema and popular face of the small screen.
That four-hour journey that predominates in Macarena Gómez’s train trips is perhaps one of her most fruitful moments. “It’s my moment of peace, when I can study my scripts, read books, send emails. The train is my office. Apart from studying a lot on trains, which is what I do, above all, it is very interesting to be able to study the behavior of all the passengers, that is wonderful,” she confesses with an aura of mystery.
Some of those scripts that he has analyzed, highlighted and memorized on board a train correspond to the horror films that he has given us. A specialization that is well worth a precocious anecdote, because at four or five years old he never imagined that it would be his genre par excellence.
“I saw E.T. and it caused me a lot of fear, but real fear. I thought it was going to be under my bed… I never saw a horror movie again until, suddenly, at 18, I came to Spain because I was studying acting in London and I told my mother, let’s go to the cinema. ”, he details. And there the miracle happened: watching Jaume Balagueró’s Los sin nombre made her love the genre forever.
Chance did the rest. “By coincidences in life, the first movie they offered me as an actress was a horror movie. So it was both things at the same time: horror actress and horror consumer actress. Without meaning to, one thing leads you to another. Of course, I’m always the bad one.”
What was not coincidental was his early vocation. At 12 or 13 years old he knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. And the female protagonist of Gone with the Wind, a movie that was watched at her house every year of her childhood, was very much to blame. “I became an actress because of Scarlett O’Hara, because she seems to me to be one of the most formidable characters in the history of cinema. That woman with so much charisma… I just wanted to be like her!” And so, like her, Macarena Gómez managed to be an actress. And she dared to do everything.
“I always say that I jump into the pool without knowing if it is full or empty. That is to say, I don’t mind making mistakes, that’s why I have that ability to be a chameleon, not being afraid to play characters that I’ve never done before or that don’t even suit me,” she confesses. And she recognizes that she has a magnet for somewhat disturbed characters, those who take her out of her box and comfort zone.
Although the countryside gave him the freedom that confinement cruelly took away from the cities, he admits to having felt his greatest fear in life during the hardest moments of the pandemic. Now, he has a very specific one regarding the future. “It would scare me a lot, when I die, not knowing what is going to happen to my son… I would love to be able to look at him through a little hole,” the actress is emotional.
Because Dante, in addition to many joys, has taught him a valuable lesson. “Being a mother has helped me not give so much importance to things in life that are really trivial,” confesses Macarena Gómez, who wishes that the train on which she is riding with Joana Bonet would take her, first, to Figueras. And then “at the end of the world,” the woman, actress and mother says that she will continue pursuing goals, dreams and freedoms in each of her journeys.
