Unax Ugalde Gutiérrez (born 27 November 1978) is a Spanish actor.
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Early life
Unax Ugalde Gutiérrez was born on 27 November 1978, in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country, Spain. He is the son of a worker at the Altos Hornos and a housewife. While a student, he had the ambition of becoming a marine scientist and started taking interpretation classes. In order to pay for his studies, he worked in a supermarket where he dressed up as a chocolate ball. He got his very first job in a TV series named Entre dos fuegos for ETB Basque television. In 1999, he left the Basque Country to start an acting career in Madrid.
Personal life
From 2005 to 2012, Ugalde was in a relationship with the actress Ingrid Rubio.
On 14 October 2018, he married the journalist Neus Cerdá. The actor Asier Etxeandía officiated the wedding. On 27 August 2018, the couple's first child, a boy, was born whom they called Ondei Ugalde Cerdá. On 3 January 2021, the couple's second child, a boy, was born whom they called Marc Ugalde Cerdá.
Career
Ugalde made his debut in the cinema in Fill Me with Life. He then featured in Volverás (2002), playing a good student who is about to leave home, when he met his criminal brother (Tristán Ulloa), thus leaving the "right way" and trying to help him to reach emotional maturity during a night. The same year, Ugalde had a supporting role in the film Bellas durmientes by Eloy Lozano. In 2003, Ugalde starred in the controversial film Diario de una becaria by Josecho San Mateo, director of Ugalde's first film.
That year, he was about to premiere Equus in the theatre, playing the same role for which Peter Firth was nominated for an Oscar: a young aggressive, on the brink of madness, with a great fear of the outside world (similar to the teenager who played in El grupo) who is overcome by shyness and emotional instability. Finally the work was suspended.
However, this failed attempt highlighted the fact that Ugalde was specializing in violent youth with a good heart, as he plays the role of Gorilo in Héctor (Gracia Querejeta, 2004). That year the director Paul Malo, with whom he had worked on a short film, offered him a starring role in Frío sol de invierno. Two months after the release of the latter, Ugalde received a nomination for the Goya Awards for his performance in Héctor, as well as a new nomination in the Unión de Actores Awards.
In 2005, he premiered Queens, in the role of a man about to marry his boyfriend (Daniel Hendler) in the first Spanish gay wedding who could not support his castrating mother. In his next film, Alatriste, he played the son of a fellow of Viggo Mortensen who died in Flanders. While recording he received the news that Daniel Brühl was to play Salvador Puig Antich in Salvador, to the detriment of his own candidacy.
When he completed his role in Alatriste, Ugalde recorded his third international film, this time in English. Miloš Forman asked him to play the brother of Natalie Portman in Goya's Ghosts along with Javier Bardem, Randy Quaid, Stellan Skarsgård, Eusebio Lázaro, Blanca Portillo, José Luis Gómez, Andrés Gértrudix and Fernando Tielve.
He combined the filming of his last two works with the promotion of Shooting Star which led him, among other places, to the Berlin Film Festival and in 2005 to the Festival of Seville.
Work
Play
Olaguílbe 1808
Prizes
Goya Awards
Spanish Actor's Guild
Fotogramas de Plata
Malaga Film Festival
Ourense Film Festival
Viña del Mar Film Festival
Turia Prize
Bogart Prize
Best Basque actor (2001)
Gaztea Sariak
Best actor (2000)