Jorge Perugorría


Jorge Perugorría Rodríguez is a Cuban actor, film director and painter. He is well known for his part as Diego in Strawberry and Chocolate. He recently acted in Steven Soderbergh's Che, with Benicio del Toro and in the original Netflix series Four Seasons in Havana. He lives in Santa Fe, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Havana, with his wife Elsa Maria Fuentes de La Paz and their four children.

Career

Perrugorría studied civil engineering until he turned to theater. He played Shakespeare with the Olga Alonso troupe, and starred in The Glass Menagerie with the Ritan Mountainer troupe. In the early 1990s, Perugorría helped found Havana’s Public Theatre, which started with Jean Genet’s The Maids. In this play, Perugorría acted the difficult part of Clara, working on a real gestural dimension for this feminine character. This led to his first opportunity in cinema.
Perugorría has played in several TV series or short films, but his first cinema success was Fresa y Chocolate, in which he played the part of Diego, a gay young man who meets a straight university student named David. The movie, subtly dealing with tolerance and sexual politics, made Perugorría recognizable as one of Cuba’s most famous actors.
From that moment, he has acted in nearly 50 films, including Boceto directed by Tomás Piard and Derecho de asilo by Octavio Cortázar. He has also appeared in Steven Soderbergh’s Che, and directed and acted in Se vende, a black comedy about the selling of bones of dead people. He is portraying Cuban police detective Conde in Four Seasons in Havana, a Netflix series based on novels of Cuban writer Leonardo Padura. It is a Spanish production by Tornesol.

Awards/Nominations

Director/Producer

Since 2005, Jorge Perugorría has been one of the patrons of DreamAgo, an international screenwriters association.