Asier Etxeandía

Asier Etxeandía — Biography

Bilbao-born Asier Etxeandía, a Spanish actor and singer, is best known as the fashion designer Raúl de la Riva in Velvet and its sequel Velvet Colección, and for a Goya nomination for Pedro Almodóvar's Pain and Glory. He has kept theatre, screen work and music going side by side.

He studied acting in the Basque Country and moved to Madrid at twenty. His first lasting television job was Beni in the Globomedia series Un Paso Adelante, which he left out of concern about being typecast. At the suggestion of his friend from that series, Natalia Millán, he played the Master of Ceremonies in the musical Cabaret, which established his stage reputation; in 2005 he played Dante in Tomaž Pandur's Infierno, inspired by the Divine Comedy. He then appeared in series such as Los Serrano and Los hombres de Paco. In film he was in Las 13 rosas and King Conqueror, and earned two Goya nominations, for The Bride (2015) and Pain and Glory (2019). He later joined the cast of the series Sky Rojo.

Music is a separate strand of his career: he has sung for stage productions and films, recorded a duet with Fangoria, and in 2018 formed the duo Mastodonte with the Italian musician Enrico Barbaro.