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Interview
marcela topor - 3 September 2017 2.00 h

Being whoever you want

Catalan connections

Aina Clotet
Each Wednesday evening El Punt Avui Televisió airs the series of interviews
Marcela Topor recently talked to actor Aina Clotet, who’s just directed her first short film, Tiger.
- marcela topor
What is your re­la­tion­ship with Eng­lish?
I started study­ing it at school, and af­ter­wards my fa­ther sent me for a cou­ple of sum­mers to the States. I’ve been learn­ing Eng­lish my whole life.
Ob­vi­ously, speak­ing lan­guages is very im­por­tant for an actor.
And one also mustn’t for­get about the ac­cent. You need to speak good Eng­lish if you are a doc­tor or an ar­chi­tect, but as an actor you also need the right ac­cent to play cer­tain roles. For ex­am­ple, I can’t play a na­tive Eng­lish speaker, I’d have to work very hard to make it be­liev­able. That means that I can play the for­eign girl, or the friend; but thank­fully, I think this trend is start­ing to change.
You’ve been in­volved in some in­ter­na­tional pro­jects.
I de­vel­oped a pro­ject in LA three years ago, and I’ve done a few jobs in France, like a TV se­ries. I had the ho­n­our of work­ing with Michel Haz­anavi­cius, the di­rec­tor of the movie, The Artist, in a film called Les Infidéles. And to my great plea­sure I got to work with Jean Du­jardin, the main actor in The Artist.
What do you think of dub­bing?
I re­spect the peo­ple who do this work, but I don’t think we need dub­bing. It’s much more im­por­tant to hear the ac­tors’ words and voice – as an ac­tress I be­lieve that our voices are es­sen­tially half of our work, and there’s a lot of emo­tions that we can con­vey through the way we talk. I’ve seen my­self dubbed, and it was so weird!
Do you watch a lot of se­ries or movies?
I try to watch as many as I can, be­cause I think right now there’s a lot of good con­tent – some of which is cre­ated here – but now that I have a lit­tle girl, I don’t have much time to enjoy it.
How has being a mother af­fected your ca­reer?
I de­cided that we women have su­per­pow­ers! I love my work, and I’m a very pas­sion­ate per­son, so I try to jug­gle both things – I bring my daugh­ter to work very often, and I do what­ever I can to share mo­ments with her – but ob­vi­ously now it’s harder, be­cause I have a very im­por­tant role that I will keep for­ever, and I love it.
How did you get into act­ing?
My fa­ther had an in­ter­view in TV3, and he brought me and my brother along to see the stu­dios. We were ap­proached by a cast­ing di­rec­tor who asked us if we wanted to au­di­tion for a role in one of the first Cata­lan TV se­ries. They told us to do an im­pro­vi­sa­tion, and we agreed in se­cret to recre­ate an ar­gu­ment we had had the day be­fore. They ended up giv­ing me the job! I worked on that se­ries for four years, and when I was 16 I de­cided to stop a lit­tle. I felt as if I had been placed into that life, and be­fore doing films or se­ries again I wanted to grow as an ac­tress. In col­lege I stud­ied Au­dio­vi­sual Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and af­ter­wards I started His­tory of Art – but I never fin­ished that one, in­stead going into act­ing full-time.
You come from a fam­ily of doc­tors, and yet you and your brother be­came ac­tors.
We grew up in a very sci­en­tific house – but our par­ents have al­ways en­cour­aged our de­ci­sions. Look at my brother – he did a few things as a kid, but he for­went act­ing in favour of a mar­ket­ing ca­reer up until he was 28, and then de­cided he wanted to go in front of the cam­era again. I’d have loved to study med­i­cine if Id’ had the time, but I chose act­ing in­stead, and my fam­ily has al­ways sup­ported me. Thank­fully, one of the things I love the most about my job is that you can be­come what­ever you want, to change your point of view and see life dif­fer­ently.
Tell me about your new short film, Tiger, which you wrote and di­rected.
Be­fore Tiger I hadn’t writ­ten a script for a long time, be­cause I was fo­cused on my work. But of course, while I was preg­nant I couldn’t take on jobs, so even­tu­ally I had the idea and I wrote it. I didn’t think much of it at the time; I merely wanted to talk about that mo­ment, about the changes in the cou­ple, and how it af­fects their lives. The story talks about a cou­ple await­ing their first child, who have lost their cat. It’s a metaphor; the cat is sim­ply an ex­cuse for them to talk about their prob­lems dur­ing the preg­nancy, about their fears and how they be­lieve they should act faced with their up­com­ing par­ent­hood.
What about your fu­ture pro­jects?
I’ve just fin­ished shoot­ing a very spe­cial movie pro­duced by ESCAC films, which is di­rected by 11 di­rec­tors – it’s crazy! La filla d’algú fo­cuses on a woman who dis­cov­ers that her fa­ther is not what she thought he was, and re­solves all around her emo­tional trip. It should be aired next year. Apart from that, next year I’ll do a play called El sis­tema solar, which has been a great suc­cess in Peru. It’ll pre­miere in March, and it’s going to be the first time I work with my brother. Fi­nally, there’s my lat­est pro­ject, the still in de­vel­op­ment L.A. Jun­gle, about a woman who trav­els from Barcelona to Los Ánge­les to try to make a liv­ing there.
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