Actor Francesc Garrido dies at 56

One of the great names in Catalan cinema and theatre, Francesc Garrido, died on Sunday night at the age of 56, as confirmed by the actor's circle to ARA. Garrido was known for his roles in films such as Smoking room, Mar adentro and Balandrau, wild wind, and series such as La sala, Vida privada and Jaguar. He also had a solid theatrical career, with notable performances in productions such as Àlex Rigola's a propòsit d'The Master and Margarita, by Bulgakov; The video sees no one, by Martin Crimp, under the direction of Carme Portaceli; The Alchemist, the adaptation by Michael De Cock of Opus nigrum by Marguerite Yourcenar, as well as participating in different plays by Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Ibsen.

Francesc Garrido was one of those actors everyone wanted by their side. He lent prestige to casts and guaranteed meticulous work. He was born in Barcelona, the son of a man from Madrid who had gone to the Catalan capital to study Merchant Navy and ended up falling in love with the city, the sea, and who would become the actor's mother, a nurse. His father died in a traffic accident when Francesc Garrido was 12 years old. "When he died, cinema became my church. That's where I emotionally connected with him. I would go to see films and feel that he was accompanying me," he explained in late 2025 in an interview on the program Via lliure on Rac1. Cinema was his first passion, but theatre captivated him when he entered the Institut del Teatre.

From the outset, he combined theatre, television, and cinema. One of his first theatrical roles was in 1996 in Molière's Amphitryon, at the Teatre Lliure, under the direction of Calixto Bieito, where he shared the cast with Eduard Fernández, Garrido's favorite actor. With Fernández and Bieito, he repeated in 1997 in Shakespeare's The Tempest, also at the Lliure. One of his first television appearances was in the series Estació d'enllaç (1996-1999), where he played the role of Estradé in about fifteen episodes. His film debut came in 1997 in Mario Camus' The City of Prodigies.

Francesc Garrido's interpretive solvency did not go unnoticed. Under the direction of Lluís Pasqual, he performed The Cherry Orchard at Lliure in 2000 and Edipo XXI at the Grec Festival in 2002, the same year he participated in a production of Coriolanus directed by Georges Lavaudant at the Teatre Nacional. And with Bieito he worked again on King Lear, at the Romea in 2004. In parallel, he began a film career, with roles in films such as The Dutchman's Island (Sigfrid Monleón, 2001), which adapted Ferran Torrent's novel; and Smoking Room (Roger Gual and Julio D. Wallovits, 2002), where he shared the lead with Francesc Orella and Eduard Fernández, among others, and where Garrido's theatrical experience gave more depth to the character: in fact, the jury of the Malaga Festival awarded him the Silver Bisnaga for best actor.