10 · 23 · 23 A Fortuitous Arrival in Acting: Miguel Bosé Honored at the 21st FICM Share with twitter Share with facebook Share with mail Copy to clipboard Berenice Andrade Medina Before his musical beginnings, Miguel Bosé acted in more than a dozen films. His arrival in the world of acting was almost accidental: a filmmaker friend of his mother's asked a teenage Bosé if he wanted to play a role and without much thought, he agreed to travel to Egypt, where for three months he worked various jobs in addition to playing a soldier with only one line before he was shot. Five decades after that fortuitous event, Miguel Bosé, a consummate artist with an extensive discography and filmography, recalled his break into acting in a conversation with Alejandro Ramírez, President of the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), and director and cinematographer Victoria Clay Mendoza, before the screening of High Heels (1991, dir. Pedro Almodóvar) at the 21st FICM. Miguel Bosé at the Teatro Matamoros Before a packed Teatro Matamoros and amid laughter from the audience, Miguel Bosé said that participating in High Heels implied an exhausting physical development of the character: "That's when the agony began." Hours of makeup, skin stretching, and heavy prosthetics were all necessary. On working with Pedro Almodóvar, he said that the director had all the hues and characters very clear in his head: "Indeed, Pedro is very overwhelming. You have to know how to escape. You have to learn how to surprise a director." But while he learned, thanks to Victoria Abril's advice, that he shouldn't pay too much attention to Almodóvar's instructions –because "a good director is a bad actor"- there was no room to improvise. "[Pedro Almódovar] doesn't allow even half a comma to be changed, never: 'the sentence is the sentence, the comma is the comma, the pause is the pause, and if I think you have to say something, I'll let you know; you don't change it,'" quoted Miguel Bosé. Before the screening, Bosé accepted gifts from fans and unveiled a commemorative armchair which will remain in Room 4 of Cinépolis Morelia Centro in his honor. Then, proudly, he assured the audience: "You'll notice that I still have those splendid legs."
