The film, theater and television actress Irene Escolar (Madrid, 1988) welcomes us this Friday on the seventh floor of the Gran Hotel de Arrecife, on the occasion of her performance as a jury of the new edition of the International Film Festival of Lanzarote.
Although she comes from a family of several generations of actors and actresses, Escolar prefers to ask herself what personally led her to choose art over other options. "The question I usually ask myself is what made me want to," she begins this Friday during her conversation with La Voz.
Her love for the world of acting would not be understood without seeing art as she sees it, a kind of game. "I discovered that it was a possibility to transform myself, to leave my identity aside to find other identities and that everything could be very joyful and fun, that there was a very beautiful game with the imagination that allows you to meet many other people," confesses the winner of the Goya for Best New Actress in 2015.
In the work of transforming into other people, Irene Escolar has been Juana La Loca in the TVE series Isabel (2012-2014) or the protagonist of the production Dime quién soy, a Movistar+ series based on the novel of the same name by Julia Navarro.
Among the different productions in which she has worked, the interpreter has faced this year what she considers the greatest challenge of her career so far. "I don't know if it's because I have it very fresh or because it's the first time I've been given the opportunity to do a transformation job": the role of a police sub-commissioner in the Disney+ series, Las largas sombras (2024), directed by Clara Roquet.
"She is a character with a lot of anger and violence. She is a person who lives with armor, with a great inability to establish deep emotional connections with people, putting on this armor to defend herself from what she is most afraid of," explains the artist.
To prepare for this role, she has also had to build a whole physical part. The actress has taken this transformation process as an opportunity to discover herself more in her work as an artist. "Each job has its requirements, it's not that I say I'm going to work on this in this way," she reveals.

On the boards
Her facet in film and series would not be understood in the same way without all the years she has dedicated to theater. "I started when I was 17 and it helped me to read a text well, to unravel the features a lot, to be able to go through a piece of an hour and a half where you are on stage all the time and you have to defend that, to work a lot with the body," confesses Escolar.
For the recently awarded with the Teatro de Rojas 2023 Award, being on the boards of a theater is to live "the connection with the people, being with an audience, that each day the function is alive and different." In addition, she assures that those experiences are what have helped her to also be in front of the camera.
In her theatrical career, Irene Escolar acted alongside Amparo Baró or Carmen Machi in the production Agosto. "I was very young, it was Amparo's last performance and it was a beautiful experience, to coincide with the two and work and be with them."
Among the plays that she remembers with more affection, is Hermanas, a play directed by Pascal Rambert, in which she acted alongside the Madrid producer and actress Barbara Lennie (Los Reglones Torcidos de Dios, 2022).
Her facet as a producer
Precisely with Lennie she also shared her first series as a producer, Escenario O (2020). From this experience, in which she also participated as an actress, she learned what the world was like on the other side of the camera.
"What you learn is the difficulty of generating a project, how important the support of your colleagues is and to be very aware of the difficulty of raising something, of putting it on its feet," she indicates. After her experience as a producer, she emphasizes how fundamental it is to be grateful and to take into account the budget behind an artistic production.
After the co-production with Barbara Lennie, Irene Escolar looks towards two future projects, "calmly", a play and another film. "One of the most pleasant experiences I have had is that you can make certain decisions that are often imposed on you," she confesses.
"The stops" in the world of entertainment
Although she is currently combining the premiere of a series on a digital platform and the release of the film Caída Libre (2024) with Belén Rueda, the interpreter assures that "the stops are intrinsic to this profession. That is the particularity, that you have to learn to live with those uncertainties."
While there are times when she has linked a theatrical production with a film, she explains that in the audiovisual world "you have long periods of waiting, either resting or simply waiting, because it is a profession in which there is a lot of precariousness and a lot of work."
"It is the most difficult thing about this job because you have the project and you have those tools to be able to face that, the difficult thing is to know how to accept that you are always starting again."
Looking to the future, she is working on a production about the Atocha lawyers' massacre, in which she plays the lawyer and former mayor of Madrid, Manuela Carmena, a job for TVE.
During her stay on the island, she has also taken the opportunity to visit the Jameos del Agua or the Cactus Garden and reveals that "there is something magical" and "organic" in Lanzarote. "Above all, I really want to discover the work of César Manrique."