Legend has it that when Rossy De Palma served Pedro Almodóvar in a Madrid café, the filmmaker was so taken by the waitress he asked her to be in his next film.
When I meet 51-year-old De Palma now — some 30 years and several magical roles in Almodóvar films later — it is obvious why he might have been smitten. Forget for a moment, the look that made her an auteur’s favorite (she also appeared in Robert Altman’s Pret a Porter) and a new kind of style icon, a muse for Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler. All that — her height, her famously Picasso-esque face — mark her out as a one-off; but it’s the natural charm, the gossipy Spanish rasp, the sheer joie de vivre she exudes that makes De Palma an instant hit.
The legend of how Almodóvar met De Palma is, of course, just that. She was already playing in a band on the Movida Madrileña in Madrid, the countercultural scene that emerged in post fascist Spain. It was here that Almodóvar also made his mark with cinema that broke cultural taboos, anointed the marginalized, and put ordinary women at the heart of the drama.
At 66, Almodóvar’s new film, Julieta, has women at its center again, with De Palma in a supporting role as a curmudgeonly housemaid. It’s Almodóvar’s 20th film, his first with De Palma in over twenty years, bar a cameo in Broken Embraces (2009). Here, De Palma reminiscences about some of the good times.
On her band, Peor Impossible
“I moved from Majorca, where I was born, to Madrid with my music band — a pop punk band we called Worst Impossible. Because if somebody doesn’t like it, we had told them we were the worst impossible. They could claim anything back!”
On 80s Madrid
“We arrived in Madrid in the late 80s and the city was amazing. It was almost the end of Movida. We met all these amazing artists, this amazing soup of creativity. None of it was about celebrity or making money or getting rich. Nah. We had talent, we had creativity, we had to share it.”
On meeting Almodóvar
“[The famous story of how they met] That is legend, legend! When we arrived in Madrid, Pedro was already very known in the underground; he’d already shot Dark Habits (1983). He came to our concert, we were friends. A lot of people already vied for his attention. I decided I’m going to seduce him from a distance. I worked in a rockabilly bar at the time. He came with his costume designer because they were preparing for Law of Desire (1987). They were preparing Carmen Maura’s character, who was transsexual. I was wearing a very sexy dress. They asked, where could they get a dress like that? I said, I made it myself. They said, what about the earrings? I said, I made them myself. Pedro said to me, Listen Rossy, would you like to be in my next film, a little small role? I said, yes.”
On her look in Law of Desire
“I played a journalist in Law of Desire. Pedro said to the makeup artist, don’t make her up, ‘she is going to do it herself.’ Same with hair and costume, he said, ‘she is going to do her own.’ He wanted to capture what exactly was my look at that time.”
On her role in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
“Pedro wrote me the part in Women on the Verge (1988). In Law of Desire I had fun but I didn’t feel like an actress because I was dressing myself, I didn’t have the distance. In Women on the Verge, my character was virginal, bourgeois, something far away from me already. I was 19-years-old and I didn’t know anything about cinema. I learned everything from Pedro. In one scene, I took sleeping pills and sleep. I began to feel very boring because nothing happens. I thought, is this being an actress? I told Pedro, ‘this is so boring, I am so bored of sleeping.’ And he said, ‘what you going to do? People got to sleep!’ One day he arrived on set and asked me, ‘you want to have a dream? And in your dream you’re going to have an orgasm. And then you are not a virgin anymore because already you experiment in your dream a little bit.’ I said, ‘I’ll take it, a bit of action, the dream, the orgasm!'”
On her idea for Kika
“Always with Pedro or all of the directors I have worked with, I need to create something. Of course I obey and am an instrument of them but they let me go some little places with the character. In Kika (1993), it was my idea for my character to have big titties. Because I said to myself, a lesbian with big titties? She would prefer not to have that much. I wanted her to have big titties and [the character to] be like huh [huffs], what a pity.”
On being a fashion muse
“We were enjoying ourselves. I was giving to them, they were giving to me. It was reciprocal. I admire Jean Paul [Gaultier] so much. He is like a little boy, always curious, he never changes. It’s a pleasure to have him as a friend. Thierry [Mugler] too. Fashion is much more industry now. That moment was real creativity.”
On the best compliment she’s received
“I liked a compliment I got from a worker in the street once. He said, ‘I never knew that flowers walk.’ I liked that because it was nothing to do with admiring an actress or an artist. It’s something celebrating grace, not even beauty.”
On her look
“My nose never bothered me. Maybe if I had big sticky out ears, I would have run to the surgery but my nose never bothered me. I thought, ‘you don’t like my nose but you’re going to see my nose.’ People love the acceptance.”
Julieta is in cinemas from Friday, August 26. The Almodóvar Collection boxset is released on DVD and Blu Ray on September 19 on Studio Canal and can be pre-ordered here.
Credits
Text Colin Crummy