Juan Diego (actor)

Juan Diego Ruiz Moreno (Bormujos, Seville, December 14, 1942-Madrid, April 28, 2022) was a Spanish actor. In his long career in the performing arts, the Goya for Best Actor and the Silver Shell at the San Sebastián International Film Festival for Vete de mí stand out.

Biography

He recounted that in Bormujos he spent a happy and completely normal childhood, fleeing from the municipal police when the ball with which he played soccer with his friends crashed into the sideboard of the Town Hall, and learning to know and recognize the typologies of the simple people from rural areas. Although he always felt identified with his town, as a young man he decided to study in Seville to avoid dedicating himself to farm work.

His early acting vocation took shape in 1957, when he first went on stage. Three years later in Seville, she performed Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot,, a controversial work that cemented her prestige among critics. She furthered her training at the Conservatory of Music and Declamation, studies that allowed her to come into contact with Televisión Española (TVE). She appeared in a large number of state television programs including soap operas, dramatic productions and the then popular Estudio 1 . This experience allowed him to know the tables in depth and become familiar with the profession's classes.

He also became politically aware from a very young age and became close to the Student Union Front, which was the youth branch of dissident Falangism (which would give rise to the Independent Spanish Falange). But later, like other militants in that environment, he would end up drifting towards a militancy in the then clandestine Communist Party of Spain (PCE). In 1975 he was one of the leaders of the actors' strike that demanded a reduction in the working day for theater performers.

In 1975 Juan Diego appeared alongside Ana Belén in the controversial film La criatura, by Eloy de la Iglesia, with whom he had already collaborated on Something bitter in the mouth (1969), and participated in the first film by Francisco Rodríguez, La casa grande, a film that participated in the Berlin International Film Festival. By then, Juan Diego was already something known abroad, because in 1970 he had participated in the Ettore Scola film The Demon of Jealousy, starring Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitti.

In the following decade, he took part in The Holy Innocents (Mario Camus, 1984). It was then that she consolidated her career in the cinema. Indeed, in 1986 he participated in El viaje a nuevo parte, the chronicle by Fernando Fernán Gómez about a world in which the old comedians would no longer have a place, and Dragon Rapide, in which Juan Diego played Francisco Franco about to join the National Band. For his performance in the latter, he received the first of his nine nominations for the Goya Awards, followed by his role as Saint John of the Cross in Carlos Saura's film La noche oscura (1989). and the intriguing Capuchin in The Stunned King (1991), which earned him his first statuette.

In the middle of the decade he decreased his film activity and focused on his theater career. Around that time, she premiered El lector por horas , in which she shared the stage with Jordi Dauder and Clara Sanchis.

In 1999, he returned to the cinema with Paris-Timbuktu, in which Juan Diego gave life to an anarchist who walked naked through the streets of the town. Asunción Balaguer and Liberto Rabal announced that the performer had won his second Goya Award for best supporting male performance. Luis García Berlanga picked up the bobblehead in his name, thanking him for being the only actor who had the balls to come out naked .

In 2000, he repeated his candidacy for You're the One (a story from then), by José Luis Garci, in which Juan Diego played a priest who did not believe in his ministry, that he was disappointed in life and that despite his ideology he confessed to admiring Pablo Picasso. That same year, Miguel Hermoso entrusted her with a small but vital role in Fugitives, starring Laia Marull. Around that time, his youngest son, Diego, was born.

In 2002, Juan Diego returned to television to put himself under the orders of Benito Zambrano in Father Courage, a role for which he won the Actors Union award at which gala the candidates shouted at the in unison No to war, which rejected George W. Bush's decision to start the war in Iraq. Juan Diego himself had read manifestos at Puerta del Sol accompanied by María Barranco and Juan Diego Botto, even going so far as to assist a demonstrator injured by the police on stage. That 2003 ended with the filming of Torremolinos 73, by Pablo Berger, in which Juan Diego put himself in the shoes of an exploitative amateur porn film producer who had suffered in his own flesh the economic deficiencies of the developmentalism. Shortly after, the actor linked the filming of The Seventh Day (2003), where he became one of those responsible for the massacre in Puerto Hurraco, with the filming of La vida que te awaits, directed by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón.

In 2005 he began the successful and popular series Los hombres de Paco (which stopped broadcasting in 2010), where he acted together with the actors Paco Tous, Pepón Nieto, Hugo Silva and Adriana Ozores, among others. His character, Commissioner Don Lorenzo, was one of the most popular of the Antena 3 sitcom, his tagline my holy balls being very famous.

Juan Diego and the rest of the cast of the series The men of Paco.

In 2006, he shared the leading role with Ángela Molina in El triunfo, by Mireia Ros, and with Juan Diego Botto in Go away from me, by Víctor García León. In the XXI edition of the Goya Awards, he finally obtained his first distinction as best leading actor for his role in Go away from me . In the film he played the role of Santiago, an actor in his fifties who is forced to lodge his thirty-year-old son (Juan Diego Botto) in his house.

In 2008, he starred in the film Casual Day, combining filming with the recording of the series Los hombres de Paco.

In 2010, after finishing the series Los hombres de Paco, he continues to appear in cinema with the comedy Que se muere los feos, by Nacho G. Velilla, and the film about the life of Lope de Vega Lope, by Andrucha Waddington.

In 2011 he continued his work in cinema, the most notable being his portrayal of General Alfonso Armada in the film 23-F: la película, which earned him a new Goya nomination. The following year he returned to television with the series Toledo, crossroads , playing Alfonso X of Castilla, also known as el Sabio .

In 2012 he premiered Todo es silencio, by José Luis Cuerda, a feature film focused on drug trafficking in Galicia and premiered at the Valladolid International Film Week 2012, and shot Anochece en la India , road movie, directed by Chema Rodríguez, released in 2014 and for which he won the best actor award at the Malaga Festival for the third time.

In November 2012, the monologue La lengua madre, written by Juan José Millás, premiered in theaters, with which he began a tour throughout Spain during 2013 and 2014.

Juan Diego collecting the Silver Concha to the best actor at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 2006.

In October 2013, the newspaper La Vanguardia published a letter in favor of the independence of Catalonia written by a person who signed as Juan Diego and was from the Madrid town of Valdemoro. Various web pages echoed the open letter and attributed its authorship to the actor Juan Diego. On the occasion of the performance of the play La lengua madre in Pamplona, on January 18, 2014, the Diario de Navarra interviewed the actor and highlighted the text with the headline &# 34;The letter about Catalonia that never wrote". The actor declared: "I have not written any letter of any kind from independence. Juan Diego is signed, but that is not me, because when I write a letter I am Juan Diego Ruiz Moreno. I wanted to say that it is a fallacious lie. He pointed out that he was not going to do anything to deny it because "it is to put you in a wheel of lies, and not". "Someone who liked that letter very much took it and put into my mouth all the great and wonderful consequence of what independence is for Catalonia. I think it is very important that it be known that I am not the author". Finally, in January 2018, a Catalan digital newspaper published a rectification in this regard and the actor issued a statement in El País to publicly deny his authorship of the letter.

In view of the 2015 municipal elections in Torrelodones, the municipality where he lived, he signed the document titled «Call for candidacy of citizen confluence in Torrelodones», which requested the vote for Confluencia Ciudadana.^{[ citation required]} In 2018 he was named adoptive son of Sevilla.

Passed away on April 28, 2022 after a long illness.

Partial filmography

Cinema

Television

Theater

• The cat on the roof of zinc (2017).
• Dreams and visions of Ricardo III (2014) - Teatro Español.
• The mother tongue (2012-2014) - Teatro Español.
• The pianist (2005).
• The reader for hours (1999).
• Hippolyte (1995).
• There's no way to paradise, baby. (1992).
• Don Juan Tenorio (1984).
• Pluto or comedy of the rich poor (1983).
• Ivanov (1983).
• I'll get down next time, and you? (1982).
• The kiss of the spider woman (1981).
• Petra given away (1980).
• Night of war at the Museo del Prado (1978).
• The detonation (1977).
• Orestes (1977).
• The horns of Don Friolera (1976).
• Arrival of the gods (1971).
• Forget the drums. (1970).
• Spring in Paris Square (1968).
• Conjugal sins (1966).
• Waiting for Godot (1966).

Awards and nominations

Juan Diego (left) hugging the actor Antonio Banderas during the Malaga Award of the Malaga Festival (2009).

Goya Awards

Silver Photogram Awards

Awards of the Union of Actors

Medals of the Film Writers Circle

Turia Awards

ACE Awards (New York)

Iris Awards of the Academy of Sciences and Television Arts of Spain

Max Awards

San Sebastian International Film Festival

Malaga Festival

Viña del Mar International Film Festival

Feroz Awards

TP Gold Awards

Barcelona Film Awards

Other awards

• 2009 - GQ Men's Award, to Best Performer by The men of Paco.
• 2008 - Premio del Festival Iberoamericano de Cine de Ceará, al Mejor actor por Get out of me.
• 2007 - Sol Award of the Festivalissimo of Montreal, the Best actor for Get out of me.
• 2002 - Premio de la Radio Televisión Andaluza, al Mejor actor por Father courage.
• 2000 - Premio de la Radio Televisión Andaluza, al Mejor actor por Fugitive.

Awards for a whole career

• 2017 - Ercilla Award
• 2015 - Gold Medal of the Academy of Arts and Film Sciences of Spain.
• 2011 - "Rabaliano del Año" Award.
• 2010 - "Palmera de Plata" Award for the International Festival of Independent Film of Elche.
• 2006 - Honor Prize of the II Festival of Short Films Juan Antonio Bardem.
• 2006 - RTVA Award for Andalusian Creation.
• 2006 - Gold Medal to merit in the Fine Arts.
• 2004 - Medalla de la Provincia de Sevilla.
• 2003 - Andalusian Medal.
• 1993 - Premio de Cinematografía de la Junta de Andalucía "José Valdelomar".
• Avenue with its name in Bormujos.
• 2022 - Predilect Son of Bormujos.