Ernesto Alterio

Info

Full Name: Ernesto Alterio
Date of birth: September 25, 1970 (56 years old)
Location: Buenos Aires
Country: Argentina

Ernesto Alterio has been active for 28 years, participating in 33 movies that average a 5.8/10 score.

Videos eCartelera

Tráiler en VOSE de 'Harry Potter' T1

Biography

British viewers have almost certainly seen Ernesto Alterio without registering the name, probably on Netflix, in 'Narcos: México', 'Griselda' or 'Cable Girls'. In Spain he needs no introduction whatsoever. He has spent nearly thirty years as one of the country's most reliable comic actors, with three Goya nominations and no wins to show for it.

He also carries a surname that means something in two countries at once.

Buenos Aires, 1975

He was born in Buenos Aires on 25 September 1970. His father is Héctor Alterio, one of the great Argentine actors of the last century, known outside Spain for 'The Official Story', the first Argentine film to win the foreign language Oscar, and for 'Son of the Bride'. His mother, Ángela Bacaicoa, is a psychologist.

In 1975 the Triple A death squads threatened his father and the family left for Madrid in a hurry. Ernesto was four. He grew up Spanish by circumstance and Argentine by birth, an accent he has since switched on and off depending on the part, and he took Spanish nationality years later. His sister Malena Alterio became an actress too.

He didn't go straight into it. He started a biology degree, did two years of history, and only then trained as an actor with Cristina Rota, whose Madrid school turned out half a generation of Spanish performers in the nineties.

Animalario

The stage came before the screen. In 1996 he set up a company called Ración de Oreja with Alberto San Juan, Guillermo Toledo and Nathalie Poza, and staged a play called 'Animalario'.

While performing it they met Andrés Lima, who ran a company called Riesgo. The two groups merged and kept the play's name. Animalario went on to become one of the most influential theatre companies in Spain, loud and political and not much like anything else being staged at the time.

Theatre has never quite let go of him. In 2020 he was nominated for a Max Award, the Spanish theatre prize, for 'Shock 1', Lima's production about the Chilean coup and the birth of neoliberal economics.

The comedy that made him famous

His first lead came from Fernando Colomo in 'The Stolen Years' (1998), about two students sentenced to a punishment battalion in postwar Spain. It got him a Goya nomination as best new actor. Roles in 'El cuarteto de La Habana' (1999) and 'Yoyes' (2000) followed, plus a fairly unhinged Salvador Dalí in 'Buñuel y la mesa del rey Salomón' (2001).

What made him a face everybody knew was 'The Other Side of the Bed' (2002), a musical comedy by Emilio Martínez Lázaro in which five thirtysomethings cheat on each other and sing about it. He played it alongside Paz Vega, Guillermo Toledo, Natalia Verbeke and María Esteve, and it was the Spanish hit of the year.

A year later 'Días de Fútbol' (2003), David Serrano's debut about a group of friends who start a five-a-side team out of sheer boredom, brought a second Goya nomination. He went back to the same bed and the same character for 'The 2 Sides of the Bed' (2005).

Piñeyro, Argentina and the serious work

He proved early that he could drop the comedy. He was one of the candidates locked in a room during a corporate selection process in 'The Method' (2005), Marcelo Piñeyro's adaptation of the Jordi Galcerán play, and a small-time con man in 'Swindled' (2004).

That same year he finally shared the screen with his father in 'Semen, a Love Sample'. He worked with Piñeyro twice more, on the series 'Vientos de agua' (2006), which tracked Spanish emigration to Argentina and Argentine emigration to Spain in parallel, and on 'The Widows of Thursdays' (2009).

The proper homecoming was 'Clandestine Childhood' (2011), directed by Benjamín Ávila, where he plays the uncle of a twelve-year-old whose parents are Montonero guerrillas under the dictatorship, opposite Natalia Oreiro. Argentina picked it as its Oscar entry. For an actor whose family fled exactly that, it wasn't just another job.

The two countries keep showing up in his work. In 'Easy Sex, Sad Movies' (2014) he's an Argentine screenwriter stuck in Madrid with writer's block.

Television, family and what comes next

He is also, by now, a fixture of Spanish streaming drama. Beyond the Netflix titles that travelled, he turned up in period pieces and thrillers wherever the work was, and his range on screen runs from likeable loser, in the football comedy 'Rivales' (2008), to something considerably murkier in '¿Quién mató a Bambi?' (2013).

Since then he has worked constantly and in every register: one of seven friends tearing each other apart over dinner in 'Perfectos desconocidos' (2017), the Spanish version of the Italian film that has since been remade in more countries than almost any other, a tubercular gunman in 'Gun City' (2018), and the lead in 'Ventajas de viajar en tren' (2019), Aritz Moreno's oddity about a psychiatrist telling a stranger on a train about his patients.

His third Goya nomination, this time for best actor, came with 'Un mundo normal' (2020), as a man who steals his mother's body to bury her the way she wanted. He still hasn't won one. His sister has: Malena took best actress in 2024.

On television he has moved from platform to platform, through 'Someone Has To Die' (2020), 'Los Favoritos de Midas' (2020) and 'Ana Tramel. El juego' (2021).

The ensemble comedies that Spanish audiences know him for have kept coming as well: 'Lo dejo cuando quiera' (2019), about a group of underpaid academics who start cooking a legal drug, the comic-book murder mystery 'Orígenes secretos' (2019), 'El cuarto pasajero' (2022) and 'Un funeral de locos' (2025).

His most visible job right now is Guillermo, the head of the royal household trying to teach the trade to a princess who doesn't want it, in 'Su Majestad', a monarchy comedy for Prime Video written by Borja Cobeaga and Diego San José, the pair who wrote the biggest box-office hit in Spanish cinema history, 'Ocho apellidos vascos'. He plays it with Anna Castillo. It arrived in February 2025 and was renewed for a second season in October.

In November 2025 he climbed back into the bed that made him famous. 'Todos los lados de la cama', directed by Samantha López Speranza, brought the original cast back twenty-three years on, with the children of those thirtysomethings now getting married.

He says little about his private life. He spent fifteen years with the Colombian actress Juana Acosta, separating in July 2018 on good terms. Their daughter Lola, born in 2006, has gone into the family trade and made her debut in 2026 in the series 'El Homenaje'. His partner since 2019 is the actress and artist Ella Jazz.

On 13 December 2025 his father died in Madrid at the age of 96, still working, half a century after arriving in the city he had escaped to.

The work has carried on regardless. This October brings 'Karateka', Aritz Moreno's film about the karate champion Sandra Sánchez. He has also shot 'Perfectos conocidos' in Tenerife and Madrid, the spin-off Javier Fesser has built around his character and Juana Acosta's, with the two of them playing the same pair again.

Three generations of Alterios have now worked in Spanish cinema. For a few months in 2026, between his father's funeral and his daughter's first series, all three names were in the papers at once.