Jose Coronado

Info

Full Name: Jose María Coronado García
Date of birth: August 14, 1957 (69 years old)
Location: Madrid
Country: Spain

Jose Coronado has been active for 36 years, participating in 47 movies that average a 6.6/10 score.

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Tráiler en VOSE de 'Harry Potter' T1

Biography

If you've watched a Spanish thriller in the last twenty years, you've probably watched José Coronado. He is the detective, the corrupt developer, the father with a gun, the man in the interrogation room. What's odd about that is how late he started: four years of medical school and two of law came first, then modelling, and he didn't take his first professional acting job until 1987, at nearly thirty.

Madrid, adverts and a newsroom

He was born in Madrid on 14 August 1957 into a comfortable family; his father was a telecommunications engineer. The career built slowly, through small parts and the occasional lead like 'Yo soy esa' (1990), opposite the singer Isabel Pantoja.

For years, plenty of Spaniards knew his face from yoghurt commercials rather than from films. That changed with 'Periodistas', a newsroom drama he made for Telecinco between 1998 and 2002 which won him a Fotogramas de Plata. He also worked for Carlos Saura, playing the young painter in 'Goya in Bordeaux' (1999).

Urbizu, and the end of the leading man

The real turn came from the director Enrique Urbizu, who cast him in 'Box 507' (2002) as a corrupt property developer with no charm whatsoever. Grubbier parts followed: the undercover officer in 'Wolf' (2004) and a handler of the state death squads in 'GAL' (2006).

Urbizu called him back for 'No Rest for the Wicked' (2011), and that was the part that defined him. He plays Santos Trinidad, an alcoholic detective who shoots three men in an after-hours bar and then spends the film covering up his own crime. It won six Goya Awards, including best film and best actor for him.

He was 54 and had been working for twenty-five years. He used his acceptance speech to give thanks for arriving late.

The thrillers that travelled

The following decade made him a fixture of Spanish genre cinema, which is the Spanish cinema that gets exported. He made two films with Oriol Paulo, 'The Body' (2012) and 'The Invisible Guest' (2017). The second became a phenomenon in China, where it passed its entire Spanish box office within five days and ended up the highest-grossing Spanish film ever released there.

Along the way came 'El hombre de las mil caras' (2016) for Alberto Rodríguez, the heist film 'Cien años de perdón' (2016) and 'Tu hijo' (2018), about a father who takes the law into his own hands, which brought another Goya nomination.

In April 2017 he had a heart attack at home in Madrid and spent a few days in hospital. He walked out on his own two feet and has talked about it since as a warning he needed.

Four series and a ratings habit

By then he had become one of the few Spanish actors who can carry a mainstream series on his own. 'El príncipe' (2014-2016), set in a neighbourhood of the North African enclave of Ceuta, was one of Telecinco's biggest hits of the decade.

Then came 'Vivir sin permiso' (2018-2020), as a Galician drug baron losing his memory to Alzheimer's, and 'Entrevías', four seasons between 2022 and 2024 as Tirso Abantos, an ex-soldier running an ironmonger's who starts taking on the dealers in his own street. Netflix picked it up and it travelled far beyond Spain.

He was also in 'The Snow Girl' (2023) as the heroine's mentor, a character the second season killed off in 2025, and that same year he led 'Legado' for Netflix, about a media magnate and four children circling his fortune.

Erice, a second Goya and a busy 2026

In 2023 he made the strangest and best reviewed film of his career. Víctor Erice directed his first feature in thirty-one years and cast him in 'Close Your Eyes', as Julio Arenas, an actor who vanishes in the middle of a shoot and turns up decades later with no memory of who he is.

It premiered at Cannes and won him a second Goya, this time for best supporting actor, in February 2024. Manolo Solo took the leading actor prize for the same film.

He has been guarded about his private life. He has two children: Nicolás, born in 1988 to the model Paola Dominguín and now an actor himself, and Candela, born in 2002 to the singer Mónica Molina. For the last four years or so he has been with the actress Irene López, whom he met making 'Entrevías'; in April 2026 he had to publicly deny reports that the two had married.

This year has been busy. In July Netflix released 'Los creyentes', Roger Gual's thriller about a man facing retirement who starts seeing conspiracies everywhere, and it went straight to the top of the Spanish charts.

On 25 September the same platform put out 'El problema final', a four-part adaptation of an Arturo Pérez-Reverte novel. He plays an ageing actor once famous for portraying Sherlock Holmes, stuck in a storm-bound hotel where a real murder needs solving, with Maribel Verdú and María Valverde alongside him.