Antonio Resines

Antonio Resines didn't get into film to make transcendent art or to save culture. He entered sets because at the Complutense University he shared cigarettes and hallway chats with Fernando Trueba, Óscar Ladoire and Carlos Boyero. He was studying Information Sciences with a focus on Imaging. He wanted to manage the books and schedule the shoots, not stand in front of the camera.

In 1980 Trueba put a clapboard in front of him for Ópera prima, and he discovered something very profitable. Resines didn't act like the classically trained stage actors of the era. He talked fast, waved his hands in irritation and cursed like any guy waiting for the bus in Chamberí.

Nobody ever taught him how to position himself in the light.

That shameless naturalness worked with the directors of Madrid comedy. Fernando Colomo signed him for La línea del cielo in 1983 and took him to New York with a minimal crew. The film cost barely three million pesetas and earned ten times that in commercial theaters.

Over the rest of the eighties he churned out titles such as Sé infiel y no mires con quién in 1985 and La vida alegre in 1987. The public associated him with light comedy and middle-class romantic mix-ups. But José Luis Cuerda saw something else beneath that mustache and cast him in Amanece, que no es poco in 1989.

There he nailed absurd humor without batting an eye. He delivered surreal lines with the same deadpan calm he used to order a coffee with milk at the canteen. And that total lack of pretense ended up being his best insurance policy.

The Gravity of the Butcher and the Official Office

In the late nineties, half of Spain believed Resines was only good for playing hotheads on screen and shouting in protest. Ricardo Franco blew that idea apart with a rough, painful role. In La buena estrella he played Rafael, a mutilated butcher who takes in two outcasts and builds a broken family on the edge of the abyss.

That 1997 film swept the festivals. In 1998 Resines won the Goya Award for Best Actor without shedding a single tear of vanity on stage. Restrained suffering came as naturally to him as the quick joke.

Enrique Urbizu put that dry toughness to use in 2002 for La caja 507, where Resines played a ruthless crooked official. Then Daniel Monzón came along in 2009 with Celda 211 and gave him the role of Utrilla, an overwhelmed prison guard in the middle of a riot.

But television multiplied his reach in an enormous way. After the sustained success of Los ladrones van a la oficina between 1993 and 1996, he signed with Globomedia to lead Los Serrano.

Production kicked off in 2003, and its final episode in 2008 drew more than eight million viewers to their screens. That absurd ending with the feather duster became a joke for years. He didn't care. He knew perfectly well that in television, ratings are what count and everything else is window dressing.

In February 2015 he took over as president of the Spanish Academy of Film, with Gracia Querejeta and Edmon Roch as vice presidents. He aimed to organize the commercial exploitation of the Goyas through an independent economic company. He clashed head-on with the veteran members of the board of directors.

He walked out in a huff.

In July 2016 he wrote a terse letter denouncing irreconcilable differences and resigned fifteen months after taking office. He never again sought an official post within the industry.

The Craft Without Intellectual Alibis

His working method has always been to arrive on time, know his lines and stay out of the way in the editing room. Resines has no patience for the mystique of the actor who claims to suffer in order to find the character. For him, acting is a manual trade, much like plumbing or carpentry.

In 2022 he spent forty-eight days in the hospital with a severe respiratory complication caused by the coronavirus. Thirty-six of those days were spent in an induced coma in the ICU at Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid. He left in a wheelchair, with no muscle mass and a demanding medical schedule ahead.

Four months later, he was already shooting.

In 2022 and 2023 he co-starred alongside Miguel Rellán in the series Sentimos las molestias. It poked fun at old age, joint pain and artistic decline without a trace of self-pity. In 2024 he headlined Serrines, madera de actor, in which he caricatured a veteran actor obsessed with earning prestige before hanging up his boots.

So his shooting pace stayed steady in the following years. In 2024 he premiered Cuerpo escombro and Un lío de millones. In 2025 he took on the role of a cop pushed to his limit in the thriller Mikaela by Daniel Calparsoro, and he reunited with Fernando Colomo for Las delicias del jardín.

In 2026 he completed his testimony for the documentary Landa and shot new episodes of the series Atasco. He keeps his contracts in ordinary plastic binders and, since 1980, has kept the same flat rate per shooting day set in his collective agreement.