Eduard Fernández, National Film Award winner

BarcelonaActor Eduard Fernández (Barcelona, ​​1964) continues to receive recognition. The Ministry of Culture has awarded him the National Film Prize, worth 30,000 euros. This new award adds to the ones he received last year. The Catalan actor took Gaudí to the stage to play Manolo Vital in the film The 47, about the man who hijacked a bus and made it go up to Torre Baró, and the Goya for playing Enric Marco, the impostor who invented that he had been in a Nazi concentration camp, in Frame.

The jury's decision was unanimous. They consider Fernández "one of the most outstanding actors in Spanish cinema" and highlight the "excellent" performances he has given in two completely different films. The jury, made up of Penélope Cruz, José Sacristán, Isabel Coixet, Antonio Banderas, and Carla Simón, among others, also praised his directorial debut in the short film. The otherThe actor, who turned sixty last year, commented on an interview in the ARA that it was his year: "Sixty means it's my year, the year of the dragon. 'This will be your year,' they told me, and together we're doing well." In 2024 he also received the Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts.

Eudard Fernández began his career with the theatre company Els Joglars and worked at the Teatre Lliure with Calixto Bieito and Lluís Pasqual. Throughout his artistic career he has won five Gaudí Awards: three as a leading actor for The mosquito net (2010), The man of a thousand faces (2016) and The 47 (2024), and two as a supporting actor for A gun in each hand (2012) and The child (2014). He has also won four Goya Awards: two as a leading actor for Fausto 5.0 (2001) and Frame (2024), and two as a supporting actor by In the city (2003) and While the war lasts (2019). In 2016 he won the Silver Shell at the San Sebastian Festival for his performance of Francisco Paesa in The man of a thousand faces.

A long filmography

His filmography includes films such as The Washington Wolves (1999), directed by Mariano Barroso, with which he was nominated for the Goya Awards for the first time, and where he plays a con man who is rather ill-treated by life; and Smoking room (2002), directed by Roger Gual and Julio D. Wallovits. The actor has tried his hand at many things. If Fausto 5.0 played a shameless demon, in While the war lasts (2019), directed by Alejandro Amenábar, he played General José Millán-Astray, the shady creator of the Legion who enjoyed shouting "Long live death!" But Fernández has also played heroes, such as Manolo Vital, and a sensitive and transparent man who desperately clings to a woman who cheats on him. In the city by Cesc Gay.