Feature Image: Amparo Noguera is a Chilean award-winning actress. Courtesy of Agencia La Luz.
Amparo Noguera’s Powerful Acting Portrays What It Means to Be a Woman
Amparo Noguera is an iconic award-winning Chilean actress who does whatever she desires and achieves impressive accomplishments in acting. Her elegantly powerful acting art has led her to interpret characters for major streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and HBO. She portrays what it means to be a strong woman who constantly fights in whatever circumstances and situations she finds herself in.
Amparo Noguera is an award-winning Chilean actress whose acting reflects on human rights, specifically on what it means to be a woman. She was born into an artistic family, and since she can remember, acting has been essential to who she is as a person and professional.
“My father is named Héctor Noguera. He’s a very renowned and important Chilean actor, pedagogue, and theater director. I’ve been going to theaters from a very young age, and based on what he showed me, I got to know the world of theater,” Noguera said. “Since then, I’ve had an awareness of theater’s utility in the social world and how much culture matters in a country.”
Being immersed at a young age in the arts gave Noguera an early notion of what it implies to be an actress. She’d need to always work with a team to hone her acting craft. It meant having a sense of respect for the people around her and to peacefully coexist with her teammates. That respect and coexistence materialized in learning her lines and coming on set ready to work with her colleagues while taking into account their opinions.
Early exposure to the acting world meant that Noguera felt very comfortable in that environment and loved every aspect of it. This led her to study theater at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. It was an easy decision for her to pursue acting professionally—a no-brainer. Acting was also synonymous with the understanding that it is a tool to speak and reflect on human rights.
“My country, Chile, is a country that’s had a lot of violence. It had a very important dictatorship, which was a time when I worked on important and connotated pieces that had to do with human rights. With the defense of human rights,” Noguera said.
In that versatile acting space, whether it’s film, theater, or television, she’s found herself as someone who responsibly and respectfully speaks about heavy subjects. She understands the art of acting as one where she uses her body and soul to represent what she sees in another human being.
Her body is her instrument, and her mind works to see the other character she has to deliver to the audience. She needs a lot of empathy to gracefully surrender herself to the character and hand it over to the spectators. She needs to comprehend the character and locate its fragility.
“I need to locate the character’s desire and their impossibility of living,” Noguera said.
Finding the Human Fragility
To understand a character’s desire and impossibility of living, she first has to understand their story. She aims to comprehend their fragility and why they demand what they demand. She has to dig deep into the character to grasp that there are deficiencies and contradictions behind those desires and demands. That’s what she’s interested in portraying and what draws her attention to the human being.
In her search for her characters’ deficiencies and contradictions, she also finds the art of acting, one in which she has to be able to reinterpret reality. She needs to deliver a reality with which the audience feels reflected, whether that’s through a theater play, film, or television. She wants her audience to understand the questions about their existence through her acting and powerful characters.
Her elegant reflection and reinterpretation of distinct realities require her to explore comedy, tragedy, suspense, and more. It also requires her to adapt easily to the situations her characters are presented with and share them with her colleagues.
“In each lecture you learn something new from the conversation and reflection with the rest of the team. With the costume designer, director, cameraman, and your acting colleagues. That communion makes the character a reality,” Noguera said. “In acting it’s difficult for a character to exist without everything that surrounds them. It’s important to understand what surrounds you. You need that awareness and understand that it’s a team. Not because of a fraternal thing, but because of a strategy for the work to function well.”
In that attention to detail, Noguera has honed her powerful acting art and craft that has landed her a wide variety of roles with major streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and HBO. With Netflix, she’s appeared in the series “Baby Bandito,” “42 Días en la Oscuridad,” (42 Days of Darkness) and the feature films “Blanquita,” and “El Conde.”
With Amazon Prime Video, she appeared in the first season of the series “La Jauría,” and with HBO, she had a minor role in their series “Los Espookys.” When you watch each of these series or films, there’s a common thread in Noguera’s powerful acting. She portrays women in a Latin American context who are constantly struggling but fighting with whatever situation they’re dealing with.
Interpreting Characters in Delicate Situations
She’s part of projects that create an awareness about painful and tragic subjects such as rape, violence against women, pedophilia, child prostitution, and violence in general. The series “Baby Bandito” and “42 Días en la Oscuridad” and the feature film “Blanquita” are inspired by or based on real cases that occurred in Chile, which bring another complex element into creating the characters that Noguera was assigned.
Noguera plays Natalia in “Baby Bandito,” who’s one of the fictionalized characters belonging to the dangerous gang Los Carniceros (the buthchers).
The series was inspired by Chile’s “biggest heist of the century,” which happened in 2014 at the Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport in Santiago. Baby Bandito’s protagonist, Kevin Tapia, was inspired by Kevin Olguín, one of the members who carried out the heist. Tapia was interpreted by Chilean actor Nicolás Contreras. The show was directed by Chilean directors Julio Jorquera, Fernando Guzzoni, and Pepa San Martín, and Diego Muñoz was the series’ head scriptwriter.
Noguera’s character, Natalia, is part of the gang that Tapia fights against throughout the series. They’re involved in an environment full of violence, drug trafficking, and corruption. Noguera’s character appears as a plain one, but by the end has a major plot twist.
“With Natalia, I thought she was a woman that was inside of a world full of men. She was being used by these men, but she was the one who did the intellectual part. The butchers thought they were tricking her. They’d ask her to sign checks, and she wouldn’t notice,” Noguera said. “But she did notice. She always knew about it, and she suddenly had an absolute need to revendicate and demand not to be left out because, without her, they couldn’t function.”
Natalia’s need to revendicate herself ended up in a major plot twist that Noguera performed elegantly. It surprises you. It takes you through an unexpected route. Natalia goes from being a submissive woman to one full of rage who won’t allow men to tell her what to do.
“Natalia was a submissive woman who understood everything that was happening around her. She was managing the paperwork and signing checks that were necessary [for the butchers] to do their misdeeds of drug traffickers,” Noguera said. “Her center is touched, which is the loss of loyalty and trust with her partner. He has a romantic relationship with her brother.”
Being cheated on was what made Natalia reach her climax in the show. As Noguera explained, Natalia felt betrayed by the body and the physical. When her son gets shot, she explodes in a metaphorical manner. She takes her “mama bear” claws and becomes a lioness who defends herself and those around her.
Avoiding Revictimization in Acting
Noguera’s impressive acting takes you on that emotional journey with Natalia’s character, but she also does that with her Nora Figueroa character for “42 Días en la Oscuridad,” which is another series inspired by a real Chilean case. That was the Viviana Haeger case. In 2010, Viviana Haeger disappeared in Puerto Varas in the southern part of Chile. After 42 days, her body was found in her home.
This series implied Noguera to respectfully work around a sensitive subject related to a femicide and violence against women. Her collaboration with the directors meant avoiding re-victimization at all costs, especially when a femicide is involved. A femicide is a hate crime that is an intentional murder of women or girls because they are female, which unfortunately occurs on a frequent basis in Latin America.
“Revictimization was avoided in the way that the series was filmed. It’s a real case that all of Chile knows about. It was a case that deeply impressed Chile, but the series’ approach is [not only] about that case,” Noguera said. “It’s about all the femicides that happen in Chile and the world based on this case. I think it speaks for all women, and this case gathers all injustice conditions of a femicide. There’s no conviction. There’s no [person] guilty of murder. Nothing. A woman is blamed for suicide or having lovers. It’s an important injustice.”
As usual, victim blaming occurs in the cases of femicides, and the series’ producers and directors worked well to avoid that horrible trope of victimizing women. Noguera’s character, Nora Figueroa, was one that was working towards finding the murderer. She was a police officer working alongside a lawyer – interpreted by Pablo Macaya – and another investigator.
Nora was a character who relied deeply on her intuition, which certainly annoyed the lawyer and investigator. They’re two men who were very concrete, mental, and mathematical. Meanwhile, Nora trusts her intuition, which most of the time can’t be argued with in a logical manner, and doesn’t respond to reason.
Interpreting Nora is closely related to Noguera’s inner responsibility to use her acting as a tool to speak about human rights.
“I think I sometimes have social and human rights’ elements that are very important. They give my work a lot of sense [and purpose]. The challenge is in not lying and do it as close to the truth as possible with how things happened,” Noguera said. “Without revictimizing, ridiculing, and making heroes out of people who are not [heroes]. Keeping myself in the objective [side].”
Portraying Raw and Painful Realities Through Acting
With that responsibility in mind, Noguera also tackled the character of Piedad in the feature film “Blanquita,” which was selected to represent Chile in the Oscars. The film was inspired by the Spiniak Case in Chile.
According to the National Catholic Reporter, the Spiniak case was “a controversial legal proceeding where Claudio Spiniak, a prominent businessman, was investigated for his alleged involvement in a ring of child molesters and child prostitution, which also included senators from several political parties.”
Noguera’s character Piedad was based on a Chilean deputy from the Christian Democratic Party.
“Piedad is based on this Chilean deputy. At the beginning, [the real deputy] decided to fight for this horrible case of pedophilia led by an important Chilean politician named Jovino Novoa. This woman tried to support the abused girl, and then, her political party told her that if she continued with the girl’s defense, she’d be expelled from the party,” Noguera said.
In that sense, Noguera reflected on how the political powers have such strength over a person like her character, Piedad. Understanding Piedad’s character meant grasping how Piedad was a victim of herself due to politics. She didn’t have the courage to continue defending an abuse victim because of the threats she was facing.
“She’s a woman. Not a man. She was going to be left without her place [in the party]. It’s about showing the feeling of that woman and how being taken by a political system makes you act in a determined way. One through fear that generates fear in others,” Noguera said.
Whenever Noguera uses her acting to deal with raw and painful realities such as pedophilia, violence against women and children, and child prostitution, she’s aware that her process relies heavily on treating it with respect. She believes that eradicating abuse and violence is a complex issue, but she’s aware of dealing with harsh, difficult, and delicate subjects with the highest professional standards and respect at all times.
That’s why when interpreting the character of Verónica Rivera in the series “La Jauría,” she was already acquainted with complex subjects. In this show, the themes of abuse and violence against women were merged with the dangers of social media, specifically in teenagers.
She described social media as tremendously useful yet as platforms that use adolescents as prey. Parents are fighting against this imminent danger when their children and teenagers use them.
Noguera’s character, Verónica, was the mother of one of the protagonists in “La Jauría.” She was the mother of a girl who was a rape survivor in the series. For Noguera, that implied connecting with a mother’s panic, desperation, and guilt of not knowing where her daughter is and what happened to her.
The series is a piece of fiction, but it reflects on the issues of violence against women that’s a norm in such a machista region like Latin America. Machismo refers to "a strong sense of masculine pride and exaggerated masculinity." Reflecting on that machismo implies speaking about the abuse that women suffer, even if it’s a very painful and piercing reality. Whenever Noguera deals with these subjects, she seeks psychological advisory to better understand the situations that she’s reinterpreting.
“I think that the minds of people who have been abused are tremendously complex. I think it’s important to look for psychological advisory because of that. What remains [in a survivor’s mind] are things that you cannot comprehend from the judgment you have about it,” Noguera said. “I think it’s much more complex. It’s even accepting that an abused person can feel attracted to their abuser. The damages are enormous and unattainable for a person who has not gone through that.”
Political and Social Statements
When Noguera understands the deep implications of her characters and subjects, she also knows that she’s creating a powerful acting craft and art that is a political and social statement. Creating a theater play, series, and feature film is a political and social act in itself for Noguera.
“Just like in every country, the support is minimal [for the arts]. It’s very fragile. I think that when you touch someone’s heart in the audience, the political act is done. Just one heart is enough for the objective to be done,” Noguera said.
Two of the social and political statements merged with humor and satire that Noguera appears in are Netflix’s feature film “El Conde” and HBO’s series “Los Espookys.” In “El Conde,” which was nominated this year in the Oscars cinematography category, competing against “Oppenheimer” and “Maestro,” she appears as Mercedes, the daughter of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The film is a satire portraying Pinochet as a vampire and his family as miserable people, Noguera explained.
Chilean director Pablo Larraín laughs and makes fun of the misery of the dictator and his sons and daughters. The group of brothers and sisters cannot function without each other. To portray this character, Noguera connected with the misery about it.
“I connected with the most miserable misery of a miserable [person]. That’s ignorance and pettiness. I think that’s dangerous, despicable, and provides all the tools to make fun of it,” Noguera said.
Even if the film is satire, it’s one that reflects on an important and negative historical figure like Pinochet in Chile.
“It’s a very important reflection because we still live Pinochet in our country. No matter how dead he is, there are many years left for the memory of that assassin to disappear in our lives. There are still torturers that roam free on the streets of Santiago,” Noguera said.
She reflected on the metaphor of the vampire portrayed by Larraín in the film and brought it to comparison with the current president of Argentina Javier Milei, a self-decribed far-right wing libertarian and “anarcho-capitalist” that appeals to a hate speech against the LGBTIQ+ community.
“That’s being a vampire. It’s being hung from a country’s neck sucking its blood even when history changes. There’s something that doesn’t leave our lives and in Argentina, Milei governs. He’s not a military dictator like Pinochet, but he’s an absolutist psychopath. He’s saying homosexual people have a disease,” Noguera said. “I think that the vampire that director Pablo Larraín and us actors appeal to in that film, is [about] showing the misery of those characters through ridicule. The problem is that they’re in power.”
With that satire comes comedy and humor, which Noguera is no stranger to. Such was the case with her small role of Isabel in “Los Espookys.” The process to create that character simply required her to plunge into a pool with no fear.
“It was a very small character. Very exaggerated and cartoonish. I had to lose my modesty and create a horrible character from which that woman [Isabel] wanted to escape. I didn’t think much about it,” Noguera said. “I did it and got married with a genre I didn’t handle yet.”
Even if Isabel was a small role for Noguera, it did go along the lines of her work in portraying what it means to be a woman. She interpreted a woman that’s done with solely existing and serving a man. Noguera said it’s an intelligent series that uses humor to showcase social spaces that are in vogue and are not yet resolved.
Even though those spaces are not yet resolved, Noguera does reflect on what it means to be a woman to portray her characters. She feels women in Latin America have made an important movement, but there’s still a long way to go.
“Being a woman is difficult in Latin America. I think in general in the world. It’s very difficult,” Noguera said.
Yet, that difficulty has never stopped Noguera from being an iconic woman and actress who does whatever she desires and achieves impressive accomplishments in acting. Her elegantly powerful acting art and craft led her to interpret characters for major streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and HBO. She’s portrayed what it means to be a strong woman who’s constantly fighting in whatever circumstances and situations she finds herself in.
“Fortunately, I move in a cultural space where the minds are more open, but I’m a woman, for example, that has no children. I’m 59, and I know that being a woman without children is like being a woman that lacks something. A deficiency of something social because it’s for others,” Noguera said. “It’s not for yourself, and if it’s for you, it’s very personal. I’m a woman who has worked a lot. I know I earn less than a man. I know men and women are different people, and I find that attractive, but why is the external treatment different.”
To keep up with Amparo Noguera’s powerful acting that portrays what it means to be a woman, follow her on Instagram at amparo_nogueraoficial.
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