Alberto Ammann

From Anonymity to the Goya in a Cell

Alberto Ammann arrived in Madrid with little more than a suitcase and the training he had received in Argentina. In Madrid, he found his place. In 2009, his professional life changed radically when Daniel Monzón entrusted him with the role of Juan Oliver. That rookie prison guard in Cell 211 earned him the Goya for Best New Actor in front of an audience that didn't know his name.

Working alongside Luis Tosar was a trial by fire. Ammann had to hold his gaze against a screen monster while his character fell apart inside. But success didn't make him lose his way.

International television came knocking on his door.

In 2010, he starred in Lope under the direction of Andrucha Waddington. It was a big-budget production that aimed to portray the poet with the spirit of a classic adventure. That year marked his definitive entry into the major leagues of Spanish cinema.

Before filming, he studies the social context of the story. He doesn't rely on instinct alone. That's why his characters usually have a very specific physicality that sets them apart from one another.

The Leap to the Cali Cartels

In 2015, he played Pacho Herrera in the series Narcos. The role of a Cali cartel kingpin, openly gay and extremely violent, gave him a global profile that has been hard to match. He reprised this role in Narcos: México during 2018.

Ammann didn't want Pacho to be a villain cliché. He worked on the accent and on restrained gestures so that the fear came from calm rather than from shouting. And the bet paid off.

The script came before the budget.

In 2017, he decided that acting alone wasn't enough. Together with Clara Méndez-Leite, he founded the School for the Art of the Actor in the Malasaña neighborhood. More than 300 students pass through its classrooms, looking for a technique that moves away from chance and focuses on the discipline of the craft.

The Resilience of Independent Cinema

In 2022, he starred in Upon Entry. It is a psychological thriller set almost entirely in an interrogation room at an American airport. The film was shot in just 17 days.

Ammann plays a Venezuelan urban planner who confronts the arbitrariness of bureaucratic power. For this role, he received a Goya nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 2024. It was a reward for a work of absolute restraint, where the actor's face is the only landscape available.

But his work doesn't stop at social drama. In 2024, he stepped into the shoes of José Luis Gil for the film Disco, Ibiza, Locomía. He had to deal with the aesthetics of the 1980s and the management of a mass phenomenon that ended up in court.

In 2024, he also appeared in the Netflix series Griselda. He played Alberto Bravo in a production that reconnected him with the American market and the drug trafficking genre.

The film Upon Entry had a production budget of less than 80,000 euros for its main shooting phase.