Jorge Perugorría

Career

Perrugorría studied civil engineering until he turned to theater. He played Shakespeare with the Olga Alonso troupe, and starred in The Glass Menagerie with the Ritan Mountainer troupe. In the early 1990s, Perugorría helped found Havana’s Public Theatre, which started with Jean Genet’s The Maids. In this play, Perugorría acted the difficult part of Clara, working on a real gestural dimension for this feminine character. And that led to his first opportunity in cinema.

Indeed, Perugorría played in several TV series or short films, but his first cinema success was Fresa y Chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate), in which he played the part of Diego, a gay young man who meets a straight university student named David. The movie, subtly dealing with tolerance and sexual politics, made Perugorría recognizable as one of Cuba’s most famous actors. From that moment, he has gone on to act in nearly 50 films -showing his full frontal nudity in some as Boceto directed by Tomás Piard and Derecho de asilo by Octavio Cortázar-, the most recent being Steven Soderbergh’s Che, and also directed a few of his own.

Recently was released successfully in Havana his last film as director and actor Se vende (For sale), a black comedy about the selling of bones of dead people.

His interpretation of the Cuban police detective Conde in Four Seasons in Havana which is shown on Netflix is perfect. He plays the character of the man with an intuitive sense for clues and probabilities who is also a romantic dreamer always searching for love with the wrong women, searching for the right line for his novels, or searching for oblivion from his problems with rum and the comradeship of his friends. A natural actor who performs his roles with sincerity and truthfulness.

Awards

Director/Producer

Actor