I S THERE, WORKING today, a better male director of women than Pedro Almodóvar? You have to go back to Hollywood masters such as George Cukor and William Wyler to uncover a film-maker who has created so many fleshy, nuanced female characters. It is, therefore, not altogether surprising that Elena Anaya blew a fuse when the great man asked her to star in his creepy, camp, compelling The Skin I Live In, writes DONALD CLARKE
"He had been carrying this story around for 10 years," she explains. "So it was in his mind before he thought of me. But, in the last few years, he said that, when thinking about it, I was the person who always appeared in his mind." Now 36, the Spanish actor has been working steadily since being ejected from drama school – the authorities disapproved of her taking jobs while studying – in the early 1990s. You can see her in Julio Médem's Sex and Lucía,Tom Kalin's Savage Graceand Almodóvar's Talk to Her. She even had a tilt at Hollywood with Stephen Sommers's bizarre Van Helsing. But the role in The Skin I LiveIn elevates her quite a few rungs up the ladder.
It's a cracking part. Based on a clever French novel named Tarantula, the picture features Antonio Banderas as a deranged plastic surgeon who – for reasons that emerge deliciously slowly – is carrying out experiments on a woman imprisoned in his luxury home. Anaya spends most of the film contained in a sterile, soulless cell. She describes the character as being like a "mannequin" or a "doll". There's also something of Bride of Frankensteinabout the role.
How do you set about investing emotion in such a creation? “Pedro can see through things,” she says. “He can see through life. He’s a visionary and, of course, he knows the female world. He knows women better than anybody. You can turn to him and say ‘what was this character doing when she was three?’ and he will always know the answer.”
Anaya says that he understands women. Glance at films such as Volver, All About My Motherand Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdownand you'll understand what she's getting at. Then again, perhaps the lack of prominent female roles in world cinema causes us to overstate Almodóvar's taste for the distaff side. "He is good with all actors," she says in her strong, confident English.
“But it is true that there are few directors who are so good with women – who write so many good scripts for women. As I say, he knows that female universe and he is able to talk about it. He breathes in emotion and breathes out thoughts like… Oh what’s the word? Under the water…” A sponge? “Yes. Like a sponge.”
Anaya suits the role perfectly. Aside from exhibiting great screen presence and a rich vocal timbre, she has a polished, symmetric look that suggests a gifted mad scientist could well have had a hand in her creation. Often clad in a flesh-coloured mask and skin-tight leotard, Anaya brings real poignancy to a character that could, in less skilled hands, have turned out as an absurd cipher.
Was it hard shaking off the role at night? “Well, a beer helps,” she says. “I play with the role – like a kid. I go deep into a very dangerous place during the rehearsal, but, when the camera has finished, I go straight back into myself. Of course, when I went home every night I felt very lucky to be safe and to be free. Of course. Yeah.”
I get the sense that Anaya, a funny woman with a great capacity for chat, does not require much energising on set. Raised in northern Spain, she is the daughter of an industrial engineer and a housewife. Neither parent had any professional interest in the arts, but her mum constructed puppets in her spare time and her sister is “a plastic artist”. So there are some creative genes nestling in her metabolism. When asked about the seeds of this playful approach to her profession, she remembers an amusing incident from her childhood. Her mother would take her for walks in the countryside surrounding Palencia, the city in which she grew up.
“You know gnomes? With the hats like cones?” We have such things in Ireland.
“My mother was very close to me and she helped me to be free. One day she created a miniature camp for gnomes with all their clothes and furniture and things. She built it in the hollow of a tree. I believed in it. Years later she gave me a gift of all the things she hid in this empty tree. She taught me to believe in whatever you wanted to believe.”
Anaya seems to have been a bit of a handful as a teenager. Before being ejected from drama college, she was expelled from secondary school. She seems like a pleasant woman. What was she doing that was so awful? “Nothing! I did nothing,” she almost yells. “I just didn’t want to be with nuns. I just didn’t want to be in that school. That’s all it was.”
Sadly, some unhealthy part of the brain still expects actors to view a career in Hollywood as the ultimate reward. Over the last few decades, Anaya has found plenty of roles in her native Spain. She also worked in Egypt on the touching drama Cairo Time. She can be spotted in the recent French thriller Point Blank. Her trips to Los Angeles have, however, been sporadic.
That role in Van Helsingdid not quite turn her into the next Penélope Cruz.
Commendably, she refuses to fume.
"It was weird. I lived one experience and then quite the opposite," she muses. "I did a film called Stage Kissthat never came out. We barely had money for electricity. Then I did Van Helsing with a very nice director. But he was thinking all the time about special effects. For me the greatest special effects are the looks in the actors' eyes and the inner thoughts you have. It was a funny experience. I've filmed in Cairo. I did theatre in Iceland." Sounds a bit hectic? "I don't care about nationality as long as I am happy in the work."
AlmodÓvar’s Women
CARMEN MAURA:The Madrid-born actor turned up in the very first Almodóvar movie, Pepi, Luci, Bom,but really made her mark as a TV actor in Women on the Edge of Nervous Breakdown. After a rumoured falling out, she returned for the master's Volver.
VICTORIA ABRIL:While Maura and Pedro were still carrying out their feud, Abril stepped in to play a former porn star and recovering drug addict in the characteristically transgressive Tie Me Up Tie Me Down.
MARISA PAREDES:Another Almodóvar recidivist, Paredes can be seen in High Heels, The Flower of My Secretand – as a flamboyant actor – in the terrific All About My Mother.
ROSSY DE PALMA:An idiosyncratic-looking actor – notably long of nose – she added colour to Law of Desire, Kika, The Flower of My Secretand Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown.Currently flogging her signature perfume.
PENÉLOPE CRUZ:Pedro's gift to the world, Cruz had a small role in Live Fleshbefore going on to appear in All About My Mother, Volverand Broken Embraces. At her best when working with her old chum.
