The Andalusian actor is a cast-iron guarantee of success for any director, giving Antonio Banderas not a moment’s hesitation in inviting him to take a walk in his ‘Summer Rain’. A few brief months ago he received the Gold Medal for the Fine Arts, and has just been the welcome recipient of another nomination for the Goya Awards (his eighth now), as Best Lead Actor for ‘Vete de Mí’.


Born in Bormujos (Seville province) in 1942, the prolific actor began his stage career in 1960 with ‘Waiting for Godot’. After studying at the Conservatory of Music and Oration, he was involved in hundreds of programmes in TVE’s Programas Dramáticos, Estudios 1, Novelas and Programas Filmados series, demonstrating from a very young age his great talent as a performer.

His film debut came in 1964 with ‘Fantasía... 3’, directed by Eloy de Iglesia, but it was in 1984 that he relaunched his career with his portrayal of the landowner’s son in Mario Camus’s ‘The Holy Innocents’.

In 1986 he was involved in ‘Voyage to Nowhere’, Fernando Fernán Gómez’s bittersweet chronicle on the twilight of Spanish Vaudeville, and also in ‘Dragón Rápide’, in which he played the role of General Franco. The first of his eight Goya Award nominations was for this last role, followed by further recognition for his portrayal of St. John of the Cross in Carlos Saura’s ‘The Dark Night’ (1989), and of a Capuchin schemer in ‘The Dumbfounded King’ (1991), for which he finally picked up his first statuette.

Towards the middle part of of the decade he cut back on his film work, focusing on his stage career, and it was at around this time that he starred in ‘Reader by the Hour’, sharing the stage with Clara Sanchis.

In 1999 he returned to the cinema with ‘Paris-Timbuktu’, portraying on screen an anarcho-nudist, a role which won him his second Goya, on this occasion as Best Supporting Actor.

In 2000 he was once more in the running, for José Luis Garci’s ‘You’re The One’, and it was in the same year that Miguel Hermoso gave him a small but telling role in ‘Fugitives’.

In 2002 Juan Diego returned to television, working with director Benito Zambrano on ‘Padre Coraje’, for which he received the Actor’s Union award.

2003 ended with the filming of Pablo Berger’s ‘Torremolinos 73’, and shortly afterwards he followed this up with ‘The Seventh Day’, directed by Carlos Saura again, overlapping with Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón’s ‘Your Next Life’.

After he received the Gold Medal for the Fine Arts from King Juan Carlos in October last year, the opening of ‘Summer Rain’, directed by his friend Antonio Banderas, and his nomination for this year’s Goyas for ‘Vete de Mí’, has seen Juan Diego once more confirm what we all already knew: that he is one of the most dependable, sincere, versatile and committed actors working in cinema today.