Ernesto Federico Alterio Bacaicoa (born 25 September 1970) is an Argentine and Spanish film, theatre, and television actor. He is the son of Argentine actor Hector Alterio.
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Life and career
Ernesto Federico Alterio Bacaicoa was born in Buenos Aires on 25 September 1970. Alterio is the son of psychologist Modesta Ángela Bacaicoa Destéfano and actor Héctor Alterio Onorato. His younger sister Malena also pursued an acting career. He is of Italian descent; his grandparents were originally from Carpinone, a commune in the province of Isernia, in the Molise region. During the Isabel Perón government that took power shortly after Malena's birth, his father Héctor Alterio was threatened by Triple A, so the family went into exile and settled in Spain (where Héctor was working at the time) between 1974 and 1975.
Settling with his family in Madrid when he was four years old, Ernesto suffered the uprooting that exile brings. He remained attached to his Argentine roots through family traditions. Like his father, Alterio acquired Spanish citizenship along with the Argentine one. He began biology studies but left to take up history, and continued with those studies for two years. Encouraged to be like his father, Ernesto said that he went "sideways, skirting the edge of the pond so as not to fall into it: music, photography, history..." until he made the decision to accept being an actor. He trained in acting under Cristina Rota.
He made his big screen debut in 1992 with a small appearance in Shooting Elizabeth along with Jeff Goldblum. It was followed by minor appearances in You Shall Die in Chafarinas and Mi nombre es sombra.
In 1996, he founded the theatre group Ración de Oreja (seed of Animalario) together with Alberto San Juan, Guillermo Toledo, and Nathalie Poza.
He landed some early leading film roles under Fernando Colomo in the late 1990s with performances in The Stolen Years (for which he earned a nomination to the Goya Award for Best New Actor) and Havana Quartet. Starting in 2003, Alterio had a 15-year-long relationship with actress Juana Acosta, with whom he had one daughter.
He has starred in the cult miniseries Vientos del agua with his father, and has twice worked with director Marcelo Piñeyro, who frequently cast his father in roles. He works both in Spanish and Argentine television.
