Clara Galle (Pamplona, 2002) has a gift: making those around her feel good. What some call energy, and others, vibrations, she has it worked very well. Or she was born with everything on. She looks straight ahead, listens, smiles and shows interest. She does not respond with monosyllables or utter ready-made phrases. She gives herself body and soul to the interview as she before gave herself to the art of the Marlborough Gallery in Madrid, where we photographed her with the Calor Color exhibition of great contemporary masters. “I just get excited about a fly,” she will say at some point to explain her good disposition and her permanent smile.
We spoke three years ago, a few weeks before releasing Through My Window (Netflix), the film based on the novel by Ariana Godoy, a best seller on the Wattpad platform, and which marked a before and after in the career of the actress. So we were coming out of a pandemic in fits and starts and Clara swore that she would take a selfie with everyone who asked, that she would even have a coffee with each fan. “It's only been three years, but it seems like a lifetime. So many things have happened that I barely recognize myself in that Clara,” says the Armani Beauty ambassador.
Although he is already a face of Netflix, he considers that he has “handled fame well.” “I don't have the feeling of being that famous, if someone comes to take a photo with me I appreciate it, and it still seems surreal to me that they want to have a selfie with me. In situations with more exposure, like red carpets, I am very aware that it is a specific moment and that it is not real life.”
When she was born, they registered her as Clara Huete Sánchez. She took the last name Galle from her great-grandfather José Galle, a photographer, the only artist in a family of doctors. He says of herself that she is “doña routines.” She does many things in a day: painting, reading, writing, keeping a personal diary, studying, filming. She manages and organizes her time in a giant paper planner. The hardcover ones.
“It's beautiful,” he says. She opens it today and all her hours appear marked in bright colors, underlined, the tasks carefully written with perfect calligraphy. In The Resistance, he told Broncano his grades: a 10 on average, and 13.65 on the EBAU. “I've always been a bit of a nerd. The old woman who stayed at home reading while her friends went out to party,” she says.
In these three years he has trained his usual discipline, but he has also discovered flexibility. “She was strict, too organized. That has a good part because it makes it easier to have everything under control. Or so I thought. Now I know that there are things that are always out of control... I still have my agenda on paper, beautiful and always full, but I have learned to flow, and that makes me proud and helps me enjoy myself more, before I used to get very anxious thinking about everything that would be left undone.”
During this time he has also cultivated a nomadic life. He lives between Madrid and Pamplona. “I'm still in the same apartment in Madrid, where I arrived three years ago, it's my little cave, but if I don't have a job I prefer to go to Pamplona. There are my family, my usual friends and nature, all of that connects me with my center. I feel safer there, but when I miss independence I return to Madrid.” Her parents are very proud and, according to Clara, they are no longer surprised by anything. “My mother calls me and no longer asks how I am, but rather what new things have happened to me,” says the actress, laughing.
He is filming his first international series in English. Quite an experience. Clara has mastered the language since she was little. Something she thanks her parents for, who don't speak it, but insisted that she learn it from a very early age. She shoots many hours a day—today, specifically, twelve—and then reads, writes and studies Art History from a distance. Now she is with the ancient world, with Egypt, but her favorite stage is the avant-garde.
“The entire impressionist stage, when women like Berthe Morisot began to be valued as artists.” Studying is his time of day. “Sit down and read, take note and learn. It all depends on me and that is very pleasant. “It helps me stay calm and cultivate my most private areas.” For that same reason he also enjoys running. Everything that is under her control gives her peace: “When I run, I just have to overcome myself.”
Clara is easy to laugh and good-natured, but let no one confuse that with a faint-hearted nature. She fights and won't shut up. “One of the things that is most difficult for me in life is getting angry, but I have been vindictive since I was little.” Last September, an event made her the target of the worst virality on the internet. The photo of her on the Osasuna field next to the club president generated hundreds of thousands of sexist comments because she was not wearing a bra. “I wasn't surprised. It's sad, but I think we are very used to it and that is exactly the problem,” she argues.
Clara does not usually react to comments on the networks, but for once she made an exception and responded: “When I got dressed (…) it did not occur to me that my nipples were going to be so commented on. If you notice them, it's because I have them. “I have never seen such a carnage when any player from any team takes off his shirt on the pitch.” And she added, in reference to Luis Rubiales' non-consensual kiss to Jenni Hermoso: "It seems like we haven't learned anything in recent weeks."
“It worried me that so many people were interested in commenting on the same thing, people who didn't even know me. I thought about it a lot, but I simply said what I felt because it was an issue that not only affected me, but all women,” claims the actress.
Clara Galle loves to read. And she is not a poser. Read like good readers: several books at once, mixing fiction and essays. She now intersperses one of psychology, Artemis, the indomitable spirit of every woman, by Jean Shinoda Bolen, with the novel Beautiful world, where are you?, by Sally Rooney, and with the essay Good Aunt, by Alberto Olmos. She also writes, although she doesn't teach it. “It's part of my private sphere, who knows if one day something decent will come out, I'm certainly working for that,” she says.
To take care of his reading hours, he takes breaks from the Internet, for which shootings where they don't let him look at his cell phone much are very useful. “I try to pick up a book before going to sleep instead of the phone, I even prefer the Nintendo. “Playing Animal Crossing while picking apples makes me very comfortable.” She says that, although she “loves” the networks (3.9 million people follow her on Instagram), she notices that “lately there is a lack of heat.” “They have become a showcase where everyone shows their things, but no one interacts, an idea is not debated, people barely talk to you.”
Clara is living in a cloud. And she appreciates everything that happens to her. 2024 will be a big year. Through Your Look is released, the closing of the saga that began with Through My Window, the Netflix production through which we met it. In addition, we will see her in a totally new record in the series Ni una más, also on Netflix. He hopes to film Penumbra, a science fiction film, this year with Pablo Maqueda, the director of The Unknown (2023). Another first for Clara.
“It's the moment I'm most excited about in my life,” he confesses. But it's not just the profession, Clara has another open front: getting her driving license. “I like life on the road, taking trips in a van or motorcycle, now my friends always have to drive. I love going on adventures.” What would I say to Clara from three years ago? We asked. “Well... (she thinks) that all the doubts she has about herself are going to dissipate, that she will soon see that she is more capable than she believes. That she has been very intelligent protecting her family, her friends and her passions. That a thousand things are going to happen to her, but that thanks to having preserved those three pillars she will be able to overcome them. She would tell her to always stick to those pillars because they are the only safety belt available on that spaceship she is about to embark on.”
