With En Fuera de Juego, that makes three films in which actor Fernando Tejero has played a character marked by ?the King of Sports? ? the previous two being Días de fútbol (Football Days) and El Penalti Más Largo del Mundo (The Longest Penalty Shot in the World). Tejero has occasionally admitted that football is not one of his greatest passions, but destiny has given the sport pride of place in his filmography. So, despite his lack of enthusiasm for soccer, here is a review of his career ? from the sporting perspective.
Since he was very young,
Fernando Tejero has exhibited considerable side-stepping skills. First of all, he got out of attending the bullfighting academy his two brothers went to, and secondly, he escaped from the fishmonger?s he worked in while finishing high school. His determination to study acting led him to leave his home town and move to Madrid. Once settled there he enrolled in one of the most prolific and prestigious institutions devoted to training young actors and actresses in Spain ? the
Escuela de Interpretación de
Cristina Rota.
There he met other aspiring young actors like
Ernesto Alterio,
Alberto San Juan and
Willy Toledo, and worked with them in some productions put on by their theatre company,
Animalario. At around that time, Fernando started appearing in television series such as
Periodistas and in films like
Sobreviviré (I Will Survive),
La Mujer de Mi Vida and
Noche de Reyes (Twelfth Night).
But it was not until
Fernando León de Aranoa signed him up for the cast of
Los Lunes al sol (Mondays in the Sun) that he really had a free kick towards his goal. ?Coach? León de Aranoa let him play for a few minutes in a distinctly complicated position, difficult to sustain with dignity: he had to play
Lázaro, a mentally challenged shipyard security guard. But Tejero managed to give this character realism and depth, and so came through the ordeal unscathed.
An intermediate step towards success and definitive recognition was
Torremolinos 73, a comedy about a couple who take up home-made pornography ? played by
Candela Peña and
Javier Cámara.
Triumph finally arrived with
Días de Fútbol, in which he shares the pitch with old drama-school friends
Ernesto Alterio and
Alberto San Juan, in addition to actresses
Natalia Verbeke,
María Esteve,
Nathalie Poza and
Lola Dueñas. In this film, directed by
David Serrano, Tejero plays
Serafín, a lovable opportunist trying to motivate and lend his charisma to a football team he joins, made up of a group of friends going through a bad patch.
This was a good move by Tejero, who excelled himself in the role and also scored high at the
2003 Goya Awards, winning the prize for
Best New Actor. That same year he began to be showered with nominations and distinctions due to another memorable character: the caretaker from the television series
Aquí no Hay quien Viva.
Over the space of three years, for 90 episodes, Fernando played
Emilio Delgado ? a role which brought him considerable professional success and also taught him to deal with fame. At the height of his popularity, he managed to combine television and film; from 2003 to 2006 he appeared in movies like
Cachorro (Bear Cub),
Crimen Ferpecto (The Perfect Crime) and
El Penalti Más Largo del Mundo (The Longest Penalty Shot in the World).
When
Aqui no Hay quien Viva came to an end, another challenge awaited him in the wings: director
Miguel Albadalejo signed him up for a team with a completely new style of play. He exchanged the self-assurance and joy of comedy for the grief and anguish of drama in the film
Volando Voy (My Quick Way Out). This film tells the story of ?El Pera?, a juvenile delinquent famous for stealing cars in the eighties. Tejero played his long-suffering father, accompanied by
Mariola Fuentes,
Mar Regueras and
Alex Casanovas.
After
Volando Voy, Tejero continued to dodge between the big and small screens, further developing his comic register. His workload has not slackened off over the last few years ? on occasion he found himself working on four different films at the same time.
From the professional point of view, his most stress-free year was 2009, in which he only made
Al Final del Camino (Road to Santiago), brimming with that special chemistry between
Malena Alterio and himself which they had already tapped in Aquí no Hay quien Viva.
Then, in 2011, Fernando was given another opportunity to join the cast of a drama:
5 Metros Cuadrados (5 Square Meters), teaming up with
Malena Alterio once again. This movie explores how the real estate crisis affects a young married couple who have invested all their hopes and money in a new flat, only to see construction grind to a halt. For this performance Tejero won the
Biznaga de Plata award for Best Actor at the
Malaga Film Festival ? another achievement in his hyperactive career.
Active and industrious, Tejero always seems to have some film in the pipeline or on the screen. His latest release to date is
En Fuera de Juego by
David Marqués. Instead of putting on shorts to play football in his films, this time he dons a suit and tie to play a footballers? agent. This is Fernando Tejero - defying those who dare to typecast him with his dramatic career manoeuvres.
