Rodrigo de la Serna is an energetic actor whose warmth need not depend on making a character admirable. In The Motorcycle Diaries, we value the ease with which he makes a travelling companion matter without demanding the film to himself.
Fi1m perspective
In The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), Rodrigo de la Serna’s Alberto Granado enjoys being in the company of Gael García Bernal’s Ernesto. The friendship has to be convincing before the journey can mean much, and de la Serna gives it the necessary ease. We warmed to him because the pleasure he takes in Ernesto’s company never feels like an instruction to admire either man. Walter Salles’s road film is good company, with an actor who understands how much that matters.
The performance brought international recognition, but it followed Argentine work including Ricardo in the television series Okupas (2000). He went on to play Claudio Tamburrini in Chronicle of an Escape (2006) and José in Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro (2009). Playing Palermo in Money Heist from 2019 to 2021 brought further international prominence. He has often played flawed or troubled men, using humour alongside a strongly physical approach to performance.
In Salles’s film, that energy sits beside Bernal’s watchful seriousness without making the pair feel assembled to illustrate a contrast. Bernal leaves him room, and de la Serna makes Alberto someone whose company has value in itself. He does not have to keep announcing the importance of the friendship; we can see why these men would choose to travel together. That gives the encounters along the road a firmer basis, because there are already two people worth following before the film asks them to learn anything.
The reservation is Salles’s affection for young Guevara, which sometimes discourages the harder questions. The actors make the travelling friendship persuasive; they cannot make the film more searching about its subject. That is a reason to keep our praise proportionate, rather than ask de la Serna to answer for what the film chooses not to examine. Start with The Motorcycle Diaries for him, with that reservation about the film he helps make so agreeable.
Biography
Rodrigo de la Serna is an Argentine actor. Born on 18 April 1976 in Buenos Aires, he began his career in the 1990s with roles in Argentine television series and films such as Same Love, Same Rain (1999).
He gained recognition for portraying Ricardo in the miniseries Okupas (2000). In 2004 he played Alberto Granado in the biopic The Motorcycle Diaries, for which he received the Silver Condor Award for Best Actor and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance, and was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.
De la Serna is also known for his role as Palermo in the Netflix series Money Heist (2017–2021). He has appeared in other films including Tetro (2009) and Chronicle of an Escape (2006), and works as a musician in a tango band.
