During the 90s he was the pretty boy of Spanish cinema: Fernando Ramallo was the default teenager in many of the independent films that were made in our country. He should be the icon of a generation, a mature actor with his own personality and recognizable features. And yet he survives as best he can in the pick and shovel of interpretation. Surely watching ‘Krámpack’ you’ve asked yourself more than once: What happened to Fernando Ramallo?
A good life
On April 3, 1980 (that is, 43 years ago) Fernando Ramallo was born in Madrid, near Argüelles, in a time when skinheads occupied the streets and student protection was, shall we say, minimal. It was in this situation, at the age of 15, when Ramallo, a boy who was “an old boy, a very tormented boy” (according to what he told El Confidencial), of those who wrote poetry and were obsessed with deathmet David Trueba.
Trueba, at that time, came from directing ‘The worst program of the week’ and he wanted the perfect actor for his first film. As it happened, he ended up in the Ramallo institute (or rather, he slipped into the casting)… And that, out of a thousand people, they chose him to star in ‘The Good Life’. The film earned four Goya nominations (and won one for Luis Cuenca). It worked so well that the following year he was already filming ‘Secondary roads’ together with Antonio Resines and Maribel Verdú. Older words from the late 90s.
For ‘Back roads’, Ramallo was nominated for Best New Actor at the Goyas together with Manuel Manquiña (‘Airbag’) and the incontestable Andoni Erburu, the boy from ‘Secretos del corazón’ who, after winning the award and making yet another film, disappeared from the map because it was too big for him. That is something that, of course, was not going to happen to Ramallo, who had found his vocation. In fact, it became so popular that not even starring in one of the biggest flops in the history of Spanish cinemathe more or less vindicable ‘The heart of the warrior’, by Daniel Monzón (‘Cell 211’), prevented him from moving forward.
And the projects, what
In 2000 he starred in one of the most honest sexual awakening films in cañí cinema with Jordi Vilches: ‘Krámpack’ was an international success that participated in festivals in Cannes, Bogotá and Stockholm. And then the silence. “I still don’t understand what happened. I went from rejecting projects to not receiving them”the actor commented. Luckily, he did not have a drug addiction or money problems. Among other things, because it was his parents who managed it for him and he only spent it on teaching and getting rid of acne.
Neither her appearances in the forgotten series ‘Ellas son así’, which aired on Telecinco, nor her last great protagonist in ‘Some girls bend their legs when they speak’, they allowed him to continue his film career with a certain normality. The films began to lose quality and glamor (‘Loved Ones’, ‘A+’, ‘The Heart of the Earth’) and the series that they offered him, such as ‘Diez en Ibiza’, broadcast on TVE, did not quite take off.
And if there is no work, it is time to dedicate yourself to what there is. Ramallo, between paper and paper, He worked as a telemarketer, an entertainer at parties or an employee of a clothing store. “The normal thing is to start working on whatever and end up as an actor; my career has been the other way around,” he commented to El Confidencial. However, the actor is far from throwing in the towel. In fact, according to what he stated on his YouTube channel (Las cosas de Fernando Ramallo), it has only been four months without acting in theater since then.
go digital
And as for the cinema, what? Well, if Muhammad does not go to the mountain, the mountain will go to Muhammad. Ramallo has done everything: from playing himself in an episode of the fantastic ‘What happened to Jorge Sanz?’ until playing Tristán again, his character from ‘La buena vida’, in ‘Casi 40’ (which raised four times what it had cost) or appearing in the low-budget sci-fi series ‘Other Monsters’which you can see on Filmin.
The last thing we have heard from Ramallo is that plans a new movie, goes ahead with his YouTube channel… And he has had problems with SEPE, something that he has told each of his fans in Reels on Instagram and in videos where he explains the reality of being an actor in Spain who is not called Luis Tosar. However, “give up” is a word that does not enter his dictionary.
“I need to live other lives,” he commented. “I hate this one.” Few more ethnic actors than Ramallo, who continues, imperturbable, waiting for that new role that will catapult him back to fame and Give yourself, now yes, to the good life.
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