Juan Diego Botto

Juan Diego Botto is an Argentine‑Spanish actor, director and playwright whose career spans four decades of cinema, theater and television. Born on 29 August 1975 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he endured the trauma of his father’s kidnapping and murder during the Dirty War, after which his mother, actress and acting coach Cristina Rota, relocated the family to Madrid in 1978. Growing up in a household devoted to performance, Botto entered the film world at the age of eight with Game of Power (1983) and later appeared in the American series Zorro and Ridley Scott’s 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992). His breakthrough came with Montxo Armendáriz’s Stories from the Kronen (1995), a role that established him as one of Spain’s most promising young talents and led to a string of acclaimed performances in Martín (Hache) (1997), Plenilunio (2000), Broken Silence (2001) and Obaba (2005). Botto has repeatedly combined film work with a deep commitment to the stage, directing productions such as El privilegio de ser perro (2005) and a celebrated version of Hamlet at the Teatro de la María Guerrero in 2008, for which he also won the Fotograma de Plata award. In 2014 he earned Max Awards for Best Actor and Best New Author for his socially charged play Un trozo invisible de este mundo, and he continued to explore themes of exile and immigration in later works. As a filmmaker, he made his directorial debut with the socially conscious thriller On the Fringe (2022), screened in the Horizons section of the 79th Venice International Film Festival. Internationally, he reached a wider audience as General Presidente Silvio Luna in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad (2021) and as the morally complex hitman Javier in the TNT series Good Behavior (2016‑2017). Beyond the screen, Botto is an outspoken activist, protesting the 2003 Iraq war, supporting fellow children of the disappeared, and championing immigrant rights through his artistic projects. He lives in Madrid with his wife, journalist and writer Olga Rodríguez, and their daughter Salma, balancing a prolific artistic career with a steadfast dedication to social justice.