Skin Deep
Elena Anaya is director Pedro Almodóvar’s newest leading lady.
By Jonathan Durbin
Photographs by Sofia Sanchez and Mauro Mongiello
Elena Anaya, you might say, is a woman on the verge of a nervous breakthrough. Although relatively un-known on these shores, the Spanish actress has garnered critical accolades for her fearless -- and frequently clothing-free -- performances in a handful of foreign dramas. She was nominated for a Goya, Spain's equivalent of an Academy Award, after appearing in both Sex and Lucía and Room in Rome, playing roles that could politely be described as sexually volcanic. (In the U.S., she's best known for her turn as the video vixen who helped Justin Timberlake and Timbaland bring sexy back in 2006.) So it would seem that Anaya and self-consciousness live in two separate worlds. Given her body of work, it's something of a disconnect to hear her describe herself as, well, demure. "Acting, if you're shy, as I believe I am, is sometimes not very easy," the 36- year-old explains. "If you're nude, it's incredibly difficult. There are moments where you can't look down, where you're walking on a wire, where you just need to look ahead."
If she's earned a reputation as an on-screen daredevil, her latest movie seals it. It's also the one that could make her an international star. Anaya has the explicit lead in Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In, a deeply unsettling plastic surgery-revenge fantasy that toys with gender identity, black comedy, Greek myth, fashion and torture porn in equal measure. Out in theaters this October, the film is reminiscent of the director's earlier work -- see the lurid, acid-dropping vision of Dark Habits, for example -- and reunites Almodóvar with one of his old standbys, Antonio Banderas. That actor's last film with the director, 1990's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, helped vault Banderas to Zorro-status in the Hollywood pantheon; similarly, Almodóvar had a hand in introducing the world to Penélope Cruz as a prostitute who gives birth on a bus in Live Flesh (1997). The director's reputation as a star-maker is well deserved, and combined with Anaya's luminous beauty, even as the director mercilessly subverts its conventions, is the sort of stuff that is destined to transcend midnight screenings at the local art house. "Elena's main feature is how far she can go in the most compromising scenes, I mean physically," Almodóvar says. "She is very good at dif ficulties and tension. She's very open-minded. She's not prejudiced. The word 'risk' is part of her work. This is why I picked her."
Banderas agrees: "It might be cheesy and even expected to say this, but in this case it's true -- oh man, it was amazing to work with her. Working with Almodóvar is difficult -- thank God it's difficult because that makes it worthwhile -- but Elena got into his universe easily. It should have been the opposite. I'm 51 years old and I've acted with him six times, but Elena stayed with Almodóvar and the character the entire time."
It's a tough role. Inspired by Tarantula, a novel by French author Thierry Jonquet, The Skin I Live In is a morally ambiguous fairy tale about an unscrupulous surgeon, Dr. Robert Ledgard (Banderas), a man obsessed with creating artificial skin, who keeps a woman, Vera (Anaya) captive in his sprawling country estate suffering through multiple skin grafts with a seemingly inexplicable nonchalance. Ledgard refuses to allow Vera to leave her room, and forces her to wear a flesh-colored, form-molding bodysuit (designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier, naturally). "When my crew saw me with that suit -- poof -- they were uncomfortable. And they were professionals," she says. "It was kind of bizarre, and helped me jump into the character every day, to feel so trapped inside that skin." Vera's only contact with the outside world is through television -- we see her watching a National Geographic nature special and a yoga instruction video -- as Ledgard and Vera's relationship continues to devolve with an inexorable sense of dread. Without revealing its secrets, the film hinges on a shocking, Hitchcockian revelation, one the director's fans will find perfectly in line with his canon. "It's a story of survival," says Banderas. "She integrated into her character completely. Elena was completely emotionally invested in the role, but not irritating about it. She's even a little bit humble."
Shot by Almodóvar stalwart José Luis Alcaine, The Skin I Live In is a lush, gorgeous film that, at times, recalls an Old Master portrait in motion. The sets are stunning, and the attention the director pays to the details lends the film a literary resonance. There are elements, for instance, indicative of Ledgard's desire to teach Vera how to be a woman -- or a certain kind of woman, anyway: she's given a book by Alice Munro, a monograph by Louise Bourgeois (whose fetish-mask-sculptures Vera imitates to pass the time), and Chanel makeup that she refuses to wear, but uses instead to write on the walls of her room, turning her prison into a makeshift diary.
"Pedro understands how to write stories about women," Anaya says. "Normally we are just the lady in the background, or the lover of somebody, or the woman who helps in the office. Those roles are not relevant. Women's universes are amazing places that deserve to be talked about."
The actress admits that she's attracted to "complex, tricky, twisty" roles, which squares neatly with her uncompromising filmography. Her better known characters include Belén, the babysitter-cum-temptress in director Julio Medem's Sex and Lucía (2001), in which the part meant playing the sexually experimental daughter of a porn star. (It was after this performance that Almodóvar first cast her in a small part in his 2002 film, Talk to Her.) She worked with Medem again on 2010's Room in Rome, a film about a lesbian affair, which moves from a story about a one-night stand to a deeper exploration of love. (Beware, in case you're inspired to Google the trailer: the redband version is really, really NSFW.) In between, she appeared in the Mesrine crime films with Vincent Cassel and Ludivine Sagnier; Fragile, a Spanish horror movie, opposite Calista Flockhart, which earned Anaya critical acclaim; and she skirted mainstream attention as a bride of Dracula in the Hugh Jackman monster-mash Van Helsing.
She says she's driven by her love of the craft. Raised in Palencia, Spain, Anaya is the youngest of three siblings. (Her sister Marina is an artist; her brother works in film exhibition.) "I didn't want to stop acting when I was a kid," she says. "I was [brought up] with such an amazing family, especially my mother. She made my childhood so magical that I didn't want it to stop. So I thought, 'What if I make this my life?' I could be an actor and use my own experiences. Then I started acting, and I had very good teachers. They made me have a crush on it and fall in love with my profession." After graduating high school, Anaya moved to Madrid and got the title part in director Alfonso Ungría's África, a film about a boy plotting to murder his father. Anaya had to lie about her age -- at 19, she was four years older than the male lead, and Ungría was adamant about wanting to cast a younger girl. When he discovered the truth, her determination to keep the part endeared her to him. "He said the other actor, Zoe Berriatúa, could not know -- 'Just keep the secret.' And actually that helped me a lot. Because my character has a secret the entire film. That was my little trick when I was a beginner."
Anaya's intensity is her signature. "It's a beautiful experience, being another person that you can fill with your own soul. Acting is good therapy." It's a fervor she brings to all her roles, a quality made even more remarkable considering how measured and tense her performance is in The Skin I Live In. If Almodóvar ever doubted she could seethe with passion, his fears were almost certainly assuaged after he told her he wanted her to be his star.
"When he offered me the part, I screamed! Really. I screamed like I was crazy," she says. "I went home and read the script and, I tell you, I was the happiest person in the world. I knew it was not going to be easy, but that attracted me -- the difficulties in the role. After I finished reading it, I just wanted to kiss him all over his body and scream, thanks, Pedro, because you just gave me the most amazing gift."
Photos 1 and 2: Shirt and tie by Thomas Pink, bodysuit by Fifi Chanchnil, tights by Fogal and boots by Christian Louboutin.
Photos 3 and 4: Hat by Louis Vuitton, trousers by Ann Demeulemeester and bra by Made by Nikki.
Photo 5: Pedro Almodóvar pictured with Elena Anaya. She wears a jacket and shirt by Azzedine Alaia and a tie by Thomas Pink.
Photo 6: Coat by Jean Paul Gaultier.
Styled by: Karl Plewka
Makeup: Florrie White at D+V using Perricone
Hair: Paul Merritt at Jed Root
Production: Nadia Lessard at Art Department
Photography assistant: Michelle Beatty
Styling assistants: Beth Buxton, Izzy Curtis, Dee Moran, Anna Kisseleva and Rebecca Evans.
Light equipment: Oscar Godoy at Direct Photographic, ltd.
If she's earned a reputation as an on-screen daredevil, her latest movie seals it. It's also the one that could make her an international star. Anaya has the explicit lead in Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In, a deeply unsettling plastic surgery-revenge fantasy that toys with gender identity, black comedy, Greek myth, fashion and torture porn in equal measure. Out in theaters this October, the film is reminiscent of the director's earlier work -- see the lurid, acid-dropping vision of Dark Habits, for example -- and reunites Almodóvar with one of his old standbys, Antonio Banderas. That actor's last film with the director, 1990's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, helped vault Banderas to Zorro-status in the Hollywood pantheon; similarly, Almodóvar had a hand in introducing the world to Penélope Cruz as a prostitute who gives birth on a bus in Live Flesh (1997). The director's reputation as a star-maker is well deserved, and combined with Anaya's luminous beauty, even as the director mercilessly subverts its conventions, is the sort of stuff that is destined to transcend midnight screenings at the local art house. "Elena's main feature is how far she can go in the most compromising scenes, I mean physically," Almodóvar says. "She is very good at dif ficulties and tension. She's very open-minded. She's not prejudiced. The word 'risk' is part of her work. This is why I picked her."
Banderas agrees: "It might be cheesy and even expected to say this, but in this case it's true -- oh man, it was amazing to work with her. Working with Almodóvar is difficult -- thank God it's difficult because that makes it worthwhile -- but Elena got into his universe easily. It should have been the opposite. I'm 51 years old and I've acted with him six times, but Elena stayed with Almodóvar and the character the entire time."
It's a tough role. Inspired by Tarantula, a novel by French author Thierry Jonquet, The Skin I Live In is a morally ambiguous fairy tale about an unscrupulous surgeon, Dr. Robert Ledgard (Banderas), a man obsessed with creating artificial skin, who keeps a woman, Vera (Anaya) captive in his sprawling country estate suffering through multiple skin grafts with a seemingly inexplicable nonchalance. Ledgard refuses to allow Vera to leave her room, and forces her to wear a flesh-colored, form-molding bodysuit (designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier, naturally). "When my crew saw me with that suit -- poof -- they were uncomfortable. And they were professionals," she says. "It was kind of bizarre, and helped me jump into the character every day, to feel so trapped inside that skin." Vera's only contact with the outside world is through television -- we see her watching a National Geographic nature special and a yoga instruction video -- as Ledgard and Vera's relationship continues to devolve with an inexorable sense of dread. Without revealing its secrets, the film hinges on a shocking, Hitchcockian revelation, one the director's fans will find perfectly in line with his canon. "It's a story of survival," says Banderas. "She integrated into her character completely. Elena was completely emotionally invested in the role, but not irritating about it. She's even a little bit humble."
Shot by Almodóvar stalwart José Luis Alcaine, The Skin I Live In is a lush, gorgeous film that, at times, recalls an Old Master portrait in motion. The sets are stunning, and the attention the director pays to the details lends the film a literary resonance. There are elements, for instance, indicative of Ledgard's desire to teach Vera how to be a woman -- or a certain kind of woman, anyway: she's given a book by Alice Munro, a monograph by Louise Bourgeois (whose fetish-mask-sculptures Vera imitates to pass the time), and Chanel makeup that she refuses to wear, but uses instead to write on the walls of her room, turning her prison into a makeshift diary.
"Pedro understands how to write stories about women," Anaya says. "Normally we are just the lady in the background, or the lover of somebody, or the woman who helps in the office. Those roles are not relevant. Women's universes are amazing places that deserve to be talked about."
The actress admits that she's attracted to "complex, tricky, twisty" roles, which squares neatly with her uncompromising filmography. Her better known characters include Belén, the babysitter-cum-temptress in director Julio Medem's Sex and Lucía (2001), in which the part meant playing the sexually experimental daughter of a porn star. (It was after this performance that Almodóvar first cast her in a small part in his 2002 film, Talk to Her.) She worked with Medem again on 2010's Room in Rome, a film about a lesbian affair, which moves from a story about a one-night stand to a deeper exploration of love. (Beware, in case you're inspired to Google the trailer: the redband version is really, really NSFW.) In between, she appeared in the Mesrine crime films with Vincent Cassel and Ludivine Sagnier; Fragile, a Spanish horror movie, opposite Calista Flockhart, which earned Anaya critical acclaim; and she skirted mainstream attention as a bride of Dracula in the Hugh Jackman monster-mash Van Helsing.
She says she's driven by her love of the craft. Raised in Palencia, Spain, Anaya is the youngest of three siblings. (Her sister Marina is an artist; her brother works in film exhibition.) "I didn't want to stop acting when I was a kid," she says. "I was [brought up] with such an amazing family, especially my mother. She made my childhood so magical that I didn't want it to stop. So I thought, 'What if I make this my life?' I could be an actor and use my own experiences. Then I started acting, and I had very good teachers. They made me have a crush on it and fall in love with my profession." After graduating high school, Anaya moved to Madrid and got the title part in director Alfonso Ungría's África, a film about a boy plotting to murder his father. Anaya had to lie about her age -- at 19, she was four years older than the male lead, and Ungría was adamant about wanting to cast a younger girl. When he discovered the truth, her determination to keep the part endeared her to him. "He said the other actor, Zoe Berriatúa, could not know -- 'Just keep the secret.' And actually that helped me a lot. Because my character has a secret the entire film. That was my little trick when I was a beginner."
Anaya's intensity is her signature. "It's a beautiful experience, being another person that you can fill with your own soul. Acting is good therapy." It's a fervor she brings to all her roles, a quality made even more remarkable considering how measured and tense her performance is in The Skin I Live In. If Almodóvar ever doubted she could seethe with passion, his fears were almost certainly assuaged after he told her he wanted her to be his star.
"When he offered me the part, I screamed! Really. I screamed like I was crazy," she says. "I went home and read the script and, I tell you, I was the happiest person in the world. I knew it was not going to be easy, but that attracted me -- the difficulties in the role. After I finished reading it, I just wanted to kiss him all over his body and scream, thanks, Pedro, because you just gave me the most amazing gift."
Photos 1 and 2: Shirt and tie by Thomas Pink, bodysuit by Fifi Chanchnil, tights by Fogal and boots by Christian Louboutin.
Photos 3 and 4: Hat by Louis Vuitton, trousers by Ann Demeulemeester and bra by Made by Nikki.
Photo 5: Pedro Almodóvar pictured with Elena Anaya. She wears a jacket and shirt by Azzedine Alaia and a tie by Thomas Pink.
Photo 6: Coat by Jean Paul Gaultier.
Styled by: Karl Plewka
Makeup: Florrie White at D+V using Perricone
Hair: Paul Merritt at Jed Root
Production: Nadia Lessard at Art Department
Photography assistant: Michelle Beatty
Styling assistants: Beth Buxton, Izzy Curtis, Dee Moran, Anna Kisseleva and Rebecca Evans.
Light equipment: Oscar Godoy at Direct Photographic, ltd.
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