Introduction

Summary

Over the past two decades, Ricardo Darín has become the most famous actor in Argentina, and yet his star persona remains unexplored in both Hispanic and Anglophone academia. His name is synonymous with commercial success within the national film industry, so much so that he plays himself in Delirium (Kaimakamian 2014), a film which focuses – in a self-reflexive and parodical way – on two amateur filmmakers who are convinced that Darín's presence in their first feature film will guarantee its resounding triumph and make them rich. In that same comic vein, in 2015 a Brazilian film blog invented the news that the Argentine Minister of Culture was considering sponsoring a film without Darín as part of the cast (Cacofonias 2015). Even though these two examples exaggerate Darín's role in the dynamics of the local film industry, it cannot be denied that he has become a regular presence in most mainstream Argentine productions and a key economic factor in the definition and shaping of popular conceptions of national identity and film culture.

Although his success has been mainly circumscribed to Spanish-speaking countries, his name has been associated with the renewal of Argentine cinema in international film circuits. Darín gained worldwide recognition through Fabián Bielinsky's Nueve reinas [Nine Queens] (2000) and Juan José Campanella's El hijo de la novia [The Son of the Bride] (2001). In 2010, the film El secreto de sus ojos [The Secret in their Eyes] (Campanella 2009), starring Darín, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film of that year. Some Hollywood offers followed these successes – which he rejected, claiming that he does not have the intention of falling into stereotypical ‘Latino’ roles. Thanks to the release of the film Relatos salvajes [Wild Tales] (Szifrón 2014), he also gained significant attention in UK media. When reviewing this film for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw (2015) recognised that: ‘Ricardo Darín is the film's big star name’, in spite of the cast being populated with some of the most internationally renowned Argentine film performers of the past decades, such as Leonardo Sbaraglia, Darío Grandinetti and Óscar Martínez.