Anna Castillo

The Catalan Television Workshop

Anna Castillo didn't ask for permission to enter the industry. In 2016, Icíar Bollaín was looking for a girl who could gaze at an ancient olive tree with the fury of someone with nothing to lose. That role in El Olivo earned her the Goya for Best New Actress at just 23 years old.

Before film, she was on television. She was part of Club Super3 in Catalonia between 2011 and 2014, where she learned the craft of acting in front of the camera. Those years of wigs and children's songs built a discipline she would later bring to the rawest drama.

It was her first big paycheck.

But theater was where her name first started to make real noise in Madrid. In 2013, she took the stage at the Teatro Lara to play Susana Romero in the musical La llamada. Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo believed in her when nobody knew who the Javis were.

That stage production ran for years and sparked a fan frenzy that's hard to explain without mentioning her electric energy. So when the project hit the big screen in 2017, Castillo's presence was non-negotiable for the directors.

The Goya Awards Breakthrough

After winning the Goya for her role as Alma in Bollaín's film, the phone didn't stop ringing. In 2018, she shot Viaje al cuarto de una madre alongside Lola Dueñas. It's a small, suffocating film in which she plays a daughter who needs to escape a village in Seville.

She earned three consecutive Goya nominations in different categories between 2017 and 2019. Few actors in Spain have achieved that kind of academy recognition in such a short time. Yet she has always kept a careful distance from the glitz of the red carpet.

Audiences connected with her down-to-earth authenticity.

On television, she appeared in Arde Madrid during 2018 under the direction of Paco León. Her character Pilar (a young woman with cognitive difficulties who works in the house of Ava Gardner) showed a side of her that was far from her usual range. And it worked because Castillo works from pure observation.

In 2020, she joined the cast of Adú, a film addressing the drama of immigration. For this role she received another nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Her ability to cry without artifice became her greatest tool as an actress.

The Physical Shoot and the Global Market

Her acting maturity came with Girasoles silvestres in 2022. Jaime Rosales gave her a complex character who goes through three different romantic relationships. In this production, Castillo appears in nearly every shot and carries the emotional weight of a young mother searching for stability.

In 2023, she starred in Nowhere for the streaming platform Netflix. The shoot was a test of physical endurance (she spent weeks locked in a cargo container surrounded by water), and the film became one of the most-watched non-English-language productions in the service's history. The film racked up more than 80 million views in its first few months.

In 2025, she shot a film with Alejandro Amenábar.

She appeared in the series Su majestad in 2024, playing a future queen of Spain in a comedic style. It was a necessary change of pace after several intense dramas. But her major technical showcase came with El cautivo (Amenábar's project about Miguel de Cervantes), filmed on location in the Valencian Community and Seville.

The production of El cautivo had an approximate budget of 14 million euros.